Chuggie and the Desecration of Stagwater

by Brent Michael Kelley

  A few minutes later they arrived at the dark Steel Jack barracks. A wide door on the side of the building opened so the coach could enter. Once the door closed again, Chuggie and Zeb stepped out of the vehicle. Every wall of the interior was covered in metal. Even the floors were metal, scuffed and scratched from Steel Jack footsteps. Cool white lights from sconces and chandeliers, all ruggedly utilitarian, illuminated the place. The smell of grease hung thick in the air.

  "Non is downstairs in the foundry. Please follow me." Zeb guided Chuggie down the maze of metal stairs.

  They entered a large, dimly-lit workshop. Exposed ductwork hung from the ceiling, and glowing red cylinders clung to the metal walls. At the center of the space, Fey Voletta spoke with Non. Her head snapped around to see who interrupted their conversation. She looked ready to kill. When she saw Chuggie, she pulled back her hood. A wide, sunny smile replaced her angry scowl.

  "Why hello, future husband," Fey Voletta said. "I wondered when you'd come to your senses and take me away from all this. Why are you covered in blood?"

  "Non, I want answers. I want 'em now."

  "It will be our pleasure to provide you with any information we have," Non buzzed.

  "The exiled woman, Shola — what's holding her prisoner?"

  "Is that truly where you wish to begin? I see you are carrying a slug-plate satchel. It looks one of a kind. Where did you get it?"

  "Don't play games with me," growled Chuggie. He hadn't thought much about the satchel, and Non raised a good point. If anyone else recognized it as Kale's, Chuggie might have to answer all kinds of questions.

  "I would never dream of it," Non replied. "We are quite glad to see you again."

  "You knew damn well me an' Faben Brassline was headed into a fuggin' trap. Haste sent us into a Desecration, and you sat there smiling while he did. You knew all along."

  "That statement is false. We never knew what lived there."

  Chuggie smacked his fist against his palm. "Did Haste?"

  "I don't know," said Non. "Perhaps you should ask him."

  "Because all of you seem pretty happy to use the Desecration to get rid of people you don't want around." Chuggie stomped his foot.

  "Please do not group us with Haste or his people. We are nothing like them. They kept it secret from us while restricting us from investigating it. Our jurisdiction ends two hundred feet from the outer edge of the city wall. That is the letter of the law. We are bound by it. Those laws were drafted by Haste and his men, to be sure." Non folded his big arms over his chest. Above his head, his little arms clacked their metal fingers together in a slow rhythm.

  The only rhythm Chuggie heard, however, was the pounding of his heart as the fury bubbled up inside him. "Fine, you didn't know." He clenched his fists. "Now release Shola."

  "Give us a moment to tell you some other things before we come to that wretched scenario." Non's voice was frustratingly even and calm.

  "That wretched scenario is the only thing I care about right now." Chuggie punched his fist into his palm again.

  "Of course, but you do not have all the facts. Come for a short walk. I will answer all your questions to your satisfaction, I assure you." Non walked to a wide sliding door and pushed it open.

  For a moment, Chuggie just glared at Non. "Fine, damn you, I'll come along. Let it be known, Steel Jack, I don't like what you're doin' to me here."

  Fey Voletta stepped toward Chuggie. "I could do some things to you that you would like."

  Chuggie rolled his eyes, shook his head, and followed Non into the dark hallway.

  Fey Voletta fell in behind and slapped Chuggie on the ass. "So, Chuggie," she purred over his shoulder. "Where should we honeymoon? I thought the Thunder Islands would be nice. It's not like we'd want to sleep anyway."

  Chuggie brushed her hand away without turning to look at her. "The Thunder Islands aren't bad, if you don't mind little sea crabs crawling down the back of your leave me be, I'm here on serious business!"

  Footsteps and giggles echoed down the dim, metal corridor. As a gesture of contempt, Chuggie lit up the boar-tusk pipe and began smoking. He walked in the middle, flanked on either side by the girl and the Steel Jack.

  "Where are we going?" Chuggie puffed.

  "Just up here." Non pointed. "You will have to forgive his appearance."

  "Whose appearance?"

  Non gave no reply as the hall ended in a large room with ox-sized anvil at the center. A chubby, naked man lay upon the anvil, motionless except for his breathing. Clamps on his wrists and ankles held him. He wore a muzzle that, Chuggie imagined, the man didn't put there himself.

  "Who's this asshole?" Chuggie asked.

  Fey Voletta slinked to the anvil and held up the fat man's unconscious head. "You don't recognize him?"

  Chuggie looked close, but the muzzle smooshed the man's fat face too much for identification.

  "This is your old pal Haste," Fey Voletta let go. The man's head thudded against the slab and lolled to the side.

  "Oh," was all Chuggie could say. He stared at Haste, trying to comprehend the scene. "You arrested him?"

  "You should have been there." Fey Voletta giggled. "You would've laughed and laughed. He squealed and pleaded and kicked, but Non frog-marched him out of there like a naughty schoolboy."

  "I don't want anything to do with him, or you, or this town, all right?" Chuggie squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his temples. "He got my friend killed. His people exiled my lady an' tied her out to die. I want her set free, an' that's all."

  "Stagwater is about to change, Norchug Mot Losiat." Non clomped over to the anvil and looked down on Haste. "This man's agenda will soon be erased."

  "I told you, I don't give a squirt o' piss about that! I want the witch released, and I want to be gone from this place."

  "Witch? Chuggie, you didn't tell me she was a witch." Fey Voletta stepped between Chuggie and the Steel Jack with her hands on her hips.

  Chuggie sidestepped her. "You people know plenty about her. There's no reason to deny it."

  "We know your witch is building an army of automatons. She uses them to abduct people." Non's voice buzzed quietly as he leaned close to Haste.

  "Impossible." Chuggie waved a dismissive hand.

  "How much do you know about her?" Non's little neck-hands curled into fists on either side of Haste's head. "Do you know with certainty that you can trust her? Have you seen her ambulatory constructs?"

  "Amblatery what?"

  "Walking dummies that do her bidding." Non stood straight.

  "She's got a handful of scarecrows, if that's what you mean. They can walk around a bit, but she just has 'em carryin' water and gatherin' firewood." Unease spread through Chuggie's guts like a swarm of agitated centipedes. He knew Shola, and he knew Non was lying. Or did he?

  "Do you think she could have more than a handful?" asked Non. "She has been out there in the wilderness a long time. Is it possible she hides them?"

  "I don't know." Chuggie's eyes darted around the floor. "I don't think —."

  "The clothes you wear," said Non. "Are they yours, or did she give them to you?"

  Chuggie closed his eyes and shook his head.

  "You wear the boots of a dead man," Non laughed

  Chuggie opened his eyes and looked down at his boots. He felt dizzier than usual.

  Fey Voletta pressed close to him and batted her lashes over her big, green eyes. "The purse you found north of the city, that was for her, wasn't it? To set her free?"

  "To set her free so we could leave this place. She ain't plannin' no attack on the city!" Chuggie's mind reeled. Some of it certainly made sense. The clothes, the money. There'd been places she hadn't wanted him to look. But the invisible rope on her neck! He'd seen it himself!

  Fey Voletta put a hand on his arm. "Sorry, handsome. You've been duped."

  "I ain't handsome, and I ain't duped," Chuggie snarled, but his voice wavered with doubt. "If she's building an army… I left a kid with her. A boy
."

  "Oh, Chuggie, say you did not!" Non buzzed synthetic laughter. "Like giving a fly to a spider!"

  "What did you say?" Chuggie thought of the spider tattoo on Shola's hip.

  "A fly to a spider, Norchug." Non tilted sideways. "Does that mean something to you?"

  Chuggie threw his arms in the air. "Listen, you metal-skinned shitbird. I was supposed to bring her the purse. Once she was free, we were going to head south. When I was on my way back with the purse, I stumbled on your guy Kale torturin' a little boy in the woods. I saved the boy and went to her. The purse didn't work, so here I am demanding her freedom from you."

  "Have you looked inside the purse?" Non tilted to the other side.

  "Not me. I'm no idiot. Fitch did. And a guardsman." Chuggie remembered his pipe and puffed at it furiously.

  "Ah, yes. And how did that work out for Mr. Fitch?" Non turned his gaze back to Haste.

  "As you know, they're still scrapin' him up from the rocks beneath that bridge."

  Fey Voletta spoke quietly in Chuggie's ear, "I hope she hasn't made your little boy look inside yet."

  "You saved the child from Kale's torturgy and left him with the witch. You saved him from a bad fate and delivered him to a worse one. Didn't you ever consider that perhaps she is free and fooled you into believing she is not?"

  "No!" Chuggie barked.

  Fey Voletta smiled in mock-sympathy. "For the boy's sake, I hope he's already dead. These people who are into torturgy? They're a sick lot."

  "Stay on with us," Non said, "and you can help save this city from the witch. That would be appropriate justice. After all, you're the one who armed her with a powerful weapon."

  "If what you say is true, then this city made her into a monster. They deserve what she gives them." Chuggie didn't mean that. Most of Stagwater's citizens were innocent.

  "If you stay on with us, we'd be in your debt, even if you stayed just a short time. Our gift to you is here." Non gestured to Haste.

  "I gotta get back to her," Chuggie groaned.

  "Anything you want to do to him?" said Fey Voletta. "We'd help you get some real tasty payback for your dead friend."

  "You damned vultures. You knew everything from the start." Chuggie growled and kicked over a heavy metal box. "Now I gotta make sure that boy's safe!" He stomped out of the room, gripping the anchor at his chest.

  "Well, now what?" Fey Voletta's words echoed down the hall as she spoke to Non.

  "We leave this place as soon as the barge is loaded," the Steel Jack answered. "We are no longer in the service of Stagwater. Pack your things."

  "Do we still serve the law?" she asked. "Or can I have some fun with Stagwater's rat population?"

  "Soon, kitten."

  Chuggie increased his pace as he heard feminine footsteps trotting behind him.

  "Wait for me, Mr. Grouch," Fey Voletta called out.

  "Sweet bleedin' hell, how many times do I gotta tell you no?"

  "Relax," she said. "Non asked me to make sure you find your way out."

  "Oh."

  "What don't you like about me?" She giggled as she took his arm.

  Chuggie sighed. "You're wearing a thin white sheet. You're cute, dangerous an' you act like you got a thing for me. Trust me, there ain't much I don't like about you. But I'm out of commission. Off the market."

  "Well, you'd better start being nice to me. Much more abuse like this and the wedding's off!"

  "I'm in no mood," he grumbled.

  "Oh, shush, grumpy. I'll get you a stupid goat when we get on the street, and you can run on back to your witch. You won't save the kid, though. He's probably already dead."

  "I can't think like that." Chuggie walked faster.

  She squeezed his arm. "We're leaving too. I'm probably not supposed to say anything, but it won't matter in a few hours. Besides, who are you going to tell?"

  He raised an eyebrow. "Leaving? Steel Jacks had enough of Stagwater?"

  "Magistrates interfered in Steel Jack affairs. To Non, that's some kind of contract breach. I give Stagwater two years of dwindling life before all the people are either dead or gone. Humans need law. Without law, there is no civilization."

  "Not law. Without beer, there's no civilization," he corrected.

  "Ha! See? You are in the mood for joking."

  "What?" he asked. "That's not a joke."

  "Oh. Well, what about your new dagger?" She bumped him lightly with her hip.

  "You tell me, you're the blade worshipper."

  "Can I hold it?" she asked.

  Chuggie leaned away from her. "No."

  "Does it have a name?"

  "The Bleeding Jaws of Glughu, I'm told. I took it off the Gooch up in the Desecration."

  "Can I at least look at it?"

  "No," he said. Then, contradicting himself, he drew the dagger and held it up for her to see. As always, blood dribbled down his chin.

  Fey Voletta's eyes flashed wide and bright looking at the bone blade. He turned it this way and that so she could see it, then slid it back into his belt.

  Wiping the blood from his mouth, Chuggie said, "Are you happy now?"

  "I'd be happier if you gave it to me."

  He pulled his arm from her grip and put some space between them.

  "Oh, come on now. I'm not going to try and take it from you. It probably wouldn't do anything for me anyway." She grabbed his arm again. "It sounds like it's pretty devastating in your hands, though. I only wish I could spend more time with you and your dagger."

  "She only loves me for my dagger," Chuggie mused.

  Fey Voletta laughed.

  A few moments later, they stepped out on the street. Fey Voletta left him in front of the building while she fetched him a goat. A minute later, she returned pulling a bleating beast. She had flecks of blood on her pristine white robe.

  Chuggie chose not to ask any questions. He mounted the goat and rode off with a wave.

  "Until next time, lover man!" Fey Voletta called after him.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Arden Voss, being a surly bastard of a man, got no response upon ringing for his nurse. He often called for emergency assistance when he only needed a pillow fluffed or a blanket picked up off the floor. His long history of false alarms made his calls easy for the staff to ignore.

  But this time, Arden's pillow and blanket weren't the problem. His blood boiled, but his fingers were almost too cold to move. His vision went bright and dark, fuzzy and clear. He moaned and drooled while he tried to get to his feet.

  His legs turned to rubber. He fell. On his way to the floor, he bounced his head off his reading table, dislocated his knee, and broke his left wrist. He gasped for air as a cold layer of sweat squeezed from his pores.

  The end had come, and he knew it. He closed his milky eyes and tried to block out the pain. He drew from it, absorbed his own suffering to enter the Pheonal trance one last time. He'd spent so much time there in life; his hope was to live there forever after death. If his body died while his mind walked that path, just maybe….

  Swirling abstraction plunged his mind into the Pheonal realm. Light poured from above and darkness from below. They met in a swirling sphere of opposite forces. Light and dark, fire and ice, earth and air, love and hate, pleasure and pain, everything and nothing.

  The sphere grew, churning faster and faster. Tendrils snaked out from it, a thousand faces at their tips. The faces opened their eyes with expressions of terrified confusion. Panic and horror soon followed as the tendrils whipped violently in the void.

  The darkness grew below the sphere. Arden Voss felt its gaze on his soul. A creature of the dark stretched its oily claws toward the sphere and tore pieces away. With each rip of the claw, the light lost ground.

  Eyes the color of blood peered at him from the dark, pulling his soul like a magnet. Another claw shot out toward him, snatching his awareness the way an owl snatches a mouse. It peeled his mind like screaming fruit.

  Back in tangible reality, his body
quaked and kicked. Shrieking like the damned, Arden Voss shed his mortal coil alone on the cold floor.

  His mind, however, lived on in the Pheonal realm — the tortured plaything of a dark power — a power creeping ever closer to Stagwater.

  Chapter 22

  The sky grew darker and darker as the day faded, and the clouds churned in the growing wind. The air carried a charge of electricity, and the occasional fat raindrop splatted on Chuggie's brow.

  He lashed the goat to a tree at the edge of Shola's garden and scanned the perimeter. The quiet emptiness of the yard made the hairs on his neck stand up. No sign of Shola or the boy.

  Three of the witch's scarecrows surrounded him without making a sound. Chuggie drew his dagger. They closed in as a fourth ambled in the direction of the blood maple, no doubt to warn Shola of Chuggie's presence.

  "It can't be true," said Chuggie, but he didn't believe his own words.

  In a flash, the Bleeding Jaws of Glughu tore into the advancing scarecrows. He ripped figure eights that carved the wooden men into thirds. Then he dashed after the fourth scarecrow.

  He tackled it and pinned it to the ground.

  It bucked and clawed, even after Chuggie tore its arms off. The dagger let him see that the scarecrow had the same black sparklers he'd seen surrounding Shola.

  A frenzy of clacking and thumping erupted from around the bend. Mixed in with the ruckus, a rasping voice growled in a language he couldn't understand.

  A pair of pumpkin-headed scarecrows leapt from the shadows. These weren't the same ones that did Shola's chores, however. These were thicker, sturdier, and taller. Their proportions were closer to a Steel Jack's than a man's. They sprung at him, but Chuggie rolled below their meat hook hands. In a single fluid motion, he thrust the bone dagger and cleaved the closest one in half.

  The other scarecrow kicked at his head.

  Chuggie grabbed what passed for the thing's foot, and yanked the scarecrow off balance. The wooden automaton landed on its back, flailing. Immediately, it began scrambling to its feet.

  Chuggie chopped off its arms, then its legs. He sidestepped the jerking remains.