by John Ruch
“Two years, Ashton! You bastard!”
Nalia Throckton stood with her arms crossed, glaring at her obviously drunk brother. A minute ago she had been sitting at her desk balancing the olive trading accounts in their orderly rows. Now here stood her brother, the very antithesis of accountability, balance and order. Two years after ill winds last blew him here—which was three months after the time before that. And on and on.
“Two years, really?” He pretended to be surprised in that obnoxious way of his, looking up to the left and cocking his head. It made his handsome face look stupid.
“Yes, Ashton. Some of us actually keep track of things. It’s called responsibility.”
“I didn’t want it to be that way. I had to leave.”
“Wanted to leave, you mean.”
“It’s not like that. I still love you,” he said, caressing her cheek boldly.
His touch was still jolting after all these years. She reacted automatically, pressing her face against his palm. He leaned in and kissed her, and she gave him her tongue. She moaned at that familiar flavor.
They broke the kiss and looked at each other a moment.
“We can’t do this,” Nalia said.
“Not out here,” Ashton said with his damnable bullying charm.
Her feet reacted before her brain could. She moved aside as he stepped in and closed the door.
She squirmed in his embrace and stepped back to slap him. They locked eyes a moment as he rubbed his cheek.
“I hate you,” she said flatly. They kissed again.
“I know,” he said, as she pressed against him and her chest flushed.
“Vito will be home soon.”
It was hard to lie to a liar. And of course he knew how to handle her. They had been inseparable as children back on Fivestone Isle. That had deepened into love, and they began a seemingly glorious two-year affair. The horrid coldness of Mother and Father made her intimacy with her brother all the sweeter. Foolish young thing that she was, she thought it endless. Then Ashton abandoned her and their parents—worst of all, abandoned her to their parents. He ran off to sea, and to other women, leaving her nothing but vague promises, all definitely forgotten.
Damn our unbreakable bonds. She felt them weighing her down like a struggling shipwreck victim.
“Let’s go to bed. For the last time.” she said. He nodded and followed her upstairs.
At the foot of the bed, she loosened her auburn tresses and bared herself for him. He undressed as well. In the candlelight she noticed some wicked new scars and a collection of fresh bruises, all of them surely well-deserved.
“I’m your real husband,” Ashton said.
“Yes,” she confessed, craning her head back to kiss him. She nipped at his lips. She would never forgive him for this.
Afterward, Ashton held her tight and patted kisses on her earlobes and cheeks. He was so good at “comforting,” the bastard.
“Nalia, I didn’t just wander here drunk.” He explained briefly about an Imperial counsel and an expedition to the barbarian north. “You can come with me, Nal. We’d be together all the time.”
She pulled away from him like a horse that spotted a snake on its road. She sat up, her dark blue eyes blazing. “How dare you! How dare you, Ashton! After all these years, after all the times you left me, now you suddenly have a plan for us to be together?”
Her eyes felt aflame and she burst into sobs as Ashton’s eyes darted around looking for his pants.
“I have a life!” she cried raggedly. “I built a business, a marriage! All because you weren’t around. I did all the hard work of dealing with our parents! And now your big answer is to become a runaway like you, hurt people like you, because you finally remembered me? Fuck you, Ashton, and all the Arrowmasks!”
He rolled out of bed, deftly covering himself with the sheet in a sudden onset of shyness, and got himself half-dressed as she raged.
“And next time you feel the need for a sick screw, just stay in your hole and do it to yourself!” she shouted down the stairs as he fled the building.
Nalia slumped on the edge of the bed glared a moment at the stupid stuffed Squishy Squid doll Ashton had brought her on his last visit. Its cartoon eyes stared lifeless at her. She opened her nightstand and took out a little pack of chrysomweed and nibbled it to ensure she wouldn’t get pregnant with that blackheart’s baby. She fiddled with her wedding ring and thought about how much she hated Ashton, hated Vito, hated all the compromises and compulsions that had charted her course. And she hated herself most of all for how soon it would be before she craved her brother again.
“Yeah, that still didn’t work,” Ashton thought as he reeled down the street, tugging his doublet back on. Definitely a reason Nalia wasn’t in the counsel’s little portfolio.
“I’ll go find Alfie,” he thought responsibly, staggering in the general direction of the Temple of Night. But his heart was still racing and his mind was trying to spit out the bitter thing it was still chewing.
He cut deliberately down a tight alley between two stuccoed townhouses. He didn’t get five feet before hearing the expected dagger-draw from the shadows. “Your purse and your boots,” was the sales pitch.
Giddily, he realized the passage was too narrow to bring his own blade into play. He lobbed a footfull of dead rats and refuse at the shadow with a quick kick and stumbled, half-rolling along the wall as he turned, back to the street.
The shadow wriggled forward and Ashton slowed obligingly to the pace of wounded prey. Undeterred by the lamplight, the maskless robber came at him relentlessly and wordlessly—a hardened expert in the stab-and-grab, despite his fresh face.
“Come on, you little wharf rat. You know you’re faster than me,” Ashton taunted, slapping the purse tucked in his belt so the coins clinked their alluring song.
He spun away from the snake-like series of rapid dagger thrusts and tried to counter with a straight-from-the-scabbard slash of his own. He envisioned breaking the dagger’s blade, or taking off the little shit’s hand—it mattered not. But he had underestimated the weight of his new black bronze sword, and ale and Nalia-nerves made the bullseye seem even smaller. The young bandit dodged the clumsy swing, but was staggered a bit himself for the trying.
There was only the sound of their panting and the scuffing of boots on the cobbles as, in a stir of grungy blond hair and a billow of stained white shirt, the bandit tried to crouch back into balance. Ashton had only a moment.
His eye caught a fern erupting from a planter hanging from the ceiling of the adjacent townhouse’s porch. In a quick jump, he snatched it from its hook and swung it in a nasty uppercut like a leafy, feathery mace. The pot exploded on the bandit’s chin in a rain of dirt and shards.
Ashton stood over him a moment, his purple sword dangling in his left hand, hempen twine attached to potsherds in his right. Sheathing the one and dropping the other, he commenced looting. The dagger was cheap, the boots had holes, the shirt was now dirtier still, but the purse had two argenti coins. He hefted them in his palm as he inhaled deeply and then watched his breath cloud in the humid night air.
“Feeling much better now, thank you.”
He began walking away, then paused. He dropped one coin into his pouch and flipped the other onto the chest of the sleeping cutpurse.
Payment in full for services well-rendered.
CHAPTER FOUR
Aloisius Finstickle the Stone Master squatted atop the stalagmite he employed as a stool and looked closely in the glass as he adjusted his padded-satin moustache protector.
“There we are! Putting the old cat to bed! Splendid!” he said, tightening the velvet cords around his ample face. Luxuriant and finely waxed, his graying moustaches settled neatly into their nest.
He needed a bit more slack in the cords these days, just as he needed more waist to his robes. Not getting any younger, or slimmer, as much as he might wish it for all the spelunking that was required for one to become the Stone Master. We
ll, not required per se, of course. Just quite interesting stuff lurking in a cave. Testabestia fossils, cormandyte crystal tubes, bats the size of a dog with teats big enough to milk in a pinch… All sorts of hush-hush goodies and secrets the way Night likes it.
At any rate, getting older meant one has tons of experience, which was quite handy! And necessary, when one’s career goes into those funny little knots, much like the cords on a moustache-protector. Finstickle frowned thoughtfully, the expression lifting his swaddled whiskers, as he reached behind his head to dig a nail into the ornery tangle while he pondered his past.
It began, of course, with the attempt to become Aloisius the Undead Prince. Can see how that was doomed; hindsight is perfect and all that. Name was dreadful. Confused everyone. Thought he was a resurrected noble rather than someone jolly good at controlling and commanding such monstrosities. Pitchforks, torches, all that rot. He’d be too old for it today, though he kept a hand in. He glanced at the dessicated leathery lump on the stone slab across the chamber; the subject of his latest experiments in that vein. Frightful work, necrocharming and nightspelling, but someone had to do it. But not Alfie Finstickle, not after that horrid accident with dear Melthissa. Not an image to dwell on.
The thorns and brambles on the path to becoming Aloisius the Plant Lord were unpleasant as well, but then again, not memories to shun. Besides, he was cheering up now that he had worked the knot in the cord loose. Yes, Plant Lord. Never quite became one. Damned close, though. Did his time amidst the leafy savages of the Greenarch; had the tattoo on his bum to prove it.
Crazy little blighters, their widuwitas, but absolutely fascinating approach to magica. Their gods still had proper names, and the one the widuwitas liked best, and possibly vice versa, was Aithewyn, who distributed adder stones and spoke through subtle alterations in Atel’s Trail. Their spellcalling was wild and sorcerous, but translatable into formal magical notation. Had its underlying connections to necrocharming—cycles of life and death and rebirth and so forth. He never brought that up, of course. Had enough trouble convincing them not to lop off his dangly bits without something like that. Their spot of human sacrifice was outright uncomfy, too.
Still, good times, good lessons, great wine down there. Too bad it was all cut short when he came down with Jadal Foot. Itches just to think about.
It got him a plum position as lecturer at the University as well, until that impossible Professor Landia returned from the Vast’s border with his Cynrican “wood magica.” All he could really do was heat up a pine tree so the snow melted off it. Tiddle and tosh, is what that was.
Still, specialization was the do-or-die in academia these days. Alfie’s friend Twillforth recommended, quite rightly, that he go in a completely new direction. He had heard about geomancy and stonespelling as little-known sidelines in the worship of Night. Much better known for studies of dark magica, mooncharms, nocturnal animals, cryptography, that sort of thing. Caverns, the natural doings deep beneath the surface, the beds of seas and lakes—all were Night’s domain as well. Mind you, Night’s rituals proved to be far more arcane than those of Nature or Aithewyn or whichever appellation one chose. The matrices and algorithms of stonespelling were as hard as rock, one could say, and avoiding magical blowback imperative so one didn’t wake up as a boulder one morning.
He’d gotten the hang of it well enough, though it had taken him quite the sweat and blood to coax the stalagmites and stalactites that decorated this chamber in the Temple of Night. Penned a little monograph on the subject that got him back in good graces with the University, drew a few dedicated students. Couldn’t expect most to be beating down the old door. Sex magica was still the perennial favorite, and no wonder they restricted it to the fifth-levels.
“Ah, well, a pinch of snuff and then time for a few winks,” Alfie thought, breaking his own reverie shortly before a clamor of his doorknocker could do the same.
He sighed and lifted his ample backside from the stalagmite with much the same deliberate effort he used when shifting a sack of moonmilk stones for study. Tightening the belt around his purple velvet nightcoat, he waddled to the featureless soapstone door he had conjured and activated a lever that caused it to slide aside. Two robed acolytes, their faces fashionably hidden in cowl-shade, awaited him, fairly bouncing on the balls of their feet with excitement.
“Well, what is it? Some us don’t believe that Night worship means staying up ’til all hours, don’t you know? Plenty of darkness if you use your time wisely.”
“Apologies, Magimath Fin—”
“‘Stone Master,’ you mean to say.”
“Uh, yes, Stone Master. Someone came calling for you. An Ashton Arrowmask.” The acolyte looked at his companion and they shared an inane giggle. “We told him you were out performing astronomy, sending him following the false trails of secrets in the dark, as the Night decrees.”
“Oh, balderdash and poppycock! What did he want? Where did you tell him I was?”
“We had no interest in his intended direction. We sent him into the maze of the garden, my Stone Master.”
“Out of the way, then, you curs!” Finstickle pushed past the acolytes, then paused. “Telling the truth right now, are you? Or spinning new secrets for the Night?”
“Oh, that game is over. New ones have already begun,” the acolyte replied, withdrawing with his companion.
“Fine, fine! Off with you!” Finstickle bobbled with all due speed down the maroon-marble hall and its torches of violet flame, heading toward the side exit. Intolerable, these cryptophiliac Night worshipers. Can’t get a straight answer as to whether it’s bacon for breakfast, let alone if one has an important guest.
Arrowmask. Where had he heard that name before? Nire Arrowmask, of course, of the Godkillers of the Shrouded Vast. Something else, though.
“Ah, yes. The young ne’er-do-well who did quite well, as it happened, acquiring some fey-drake winglets for me some years back, when I was still operating from that Jadal stronghold.” Finstickle pursed his lips and tapped a finger along the blade of the stone knife in his pocket. “Trust this isn’t going to be a spot of the old blackmail.”
He reached the garden and frowned as the dew on the grass immediately turned his slippers into wet sponges. He found a dry spot—a sewer grate decorated, in accordance with modern tastes, with the giant-eyed Kissyface the Otter, beloved hero of a string of children’s books—and stood in the moonlight shadow of the Temple, its curious form rising behind him. It looked something like a gigantic black-and-purple paisley handkerchief laid taut over an egg, where its central dome rose. In lighter moments, Finstickle liked to jest that he was the egg, and pat his rotund belly with a chortle. Not in the mood for that at the moment. He squinted into the darkness of the garden and its dense array of planters and topiary.
“Arrowmask! Arrowmask, old man! Are you out there!”
A shadow flitted and then the rogue was beside him, his face illuminated in a small patch of Trail-light. Still a gangly sort of chap, a bit older, and presently looking a tad green around the gills.
“Alfie Finstickle,” Arrowmask said with a crooked grin. “Where’s your telescope?”
“Up the backside of a certain acolyte, if I have any say in the matter. What brings you to my door, such as it is, after all these years? Something new to sell, eh?”
“You could say that. I’m offering a journey, and maybe the chance to figure out what in Night and Fury is happening to magica.”
Alfie moved his hand off his knife and onto his chin, giving it a thoughtful rub.
“I can’t help remarking that you’re wearing a moustache-protector,” Arrowmask said.
“What?” Finstickle said, momentarily groping at his own face as if he’d been told a moth had alighted. “Oh, yes, indeed. Well, let’s get indoors before this damnable sea breeze wilts them! Humidity is beastly on the wax.”
The rogue sat on the cushioned stalagmite and leaned back against the wall, a brandy dangling from one hand a
nd one of his “cubebs” from the other. They had been through the obvious discussions—how Alfie had mastered the stone of the walls into subterranean formations; that it was indeed a mummified drake—dwarf variety, not infantile—curled up on the stone slab; that Alfie in fact had some comfortable furniture elsewhere, including a feather bed he was rather wishing he had repaired to some time ago. And Arrowmask had detailed an astounding offer of an Imperial commission to undertake a very comfortable ride into a very uncomfortable place. Finally the conversation had found a lull as they both pondered the possibilities.
Arrowmask blew a puff of smoke. “Last time I saw you, you were the ‘Plant Lord.’”
Alfie sipped at his own brandy and nodded, his now freed moustaches glistening above the rim of the snifter. “Times and tides change. Acquired a spot of disease in the jungles. No good for the health down there. So, on to Night and stonespelling. And yourself? Always some action and adventure in your goings-on, I’d wager.” He briefly shadow-boxed the air jovially.
It was Arrowmask’s turn to nod. “Tides do change. I’m often riding out on them when they do. I still take my little opportunities where I find them—like I did for you. I really miscalculated on that deal, by the way. The cartel had better drake-wing accountants than I expected. But all’s well that ends well.”
Alfie tut-tutted sympathetically.
“I’ve only been back in the city a tenday. It already feels like five years,” Arrowmask continued. “On the way here I blundered my way into some trouble with a woman. A married woman.”
The magimath folded his hands on his belly. Not sure why the poor chap would divulge such things to a former employer of some years back. Probably the professorial demeanor, a bit of the old avuncular.
“Happens to the best of us. Night has the power to create secrets, and regrets,” Alfie said, realizing he was starting to sound like those cryptomaniacs. Well, perhaps they had a point.