Till the Mountains Turn to Dust (The Chronicles of Eridia)

by J. S. Volpe

He awoke to the smell of lavender.

  Which was puzzling because he hated lavender. It was an old woman’s smell. It reminded him of hominess, good citizenship, death.

  Underlying that smell was the smell of leather, which, along with the faint creak he heard as he moved his head, led him to conclude he lay on a leather-upholstered surface. Given how long and soft it was, most likely a couch.

  He opened his eyes. Mostly. One of them wouldn’t open more than halfway, and the flesh around it felt tight and puffy. He wormed a hand out from under the unfamiliar blue blanket that draped him, and felt the swelling around the eye. The resulting sting made him wince.

  What in Yango’s name had happened to him? And more importantly, where was he?

  Facing him was a wall of black leather. The back of the couch, no doubt. Beneath him, a cream-colored sheet covered the seat of the couch. A few smears of dried blood stained the fabric.

  He started to roll over, then stiffened and sucked in air between his teeth as bolts of pain shot through his chest. Either a cracked rib or some hardcore bruising. He also felt pains in his knees, hips, arms, and…

  He raised his hands in front of his face. The knuckles were bandaged. Very professionally, too. Irregular spots of blood dotted the gauze. The skin beneath the bandages felt raw and bruised.

  It looked like he had dished it out as well as he had received. Must’ve been one hell of a fight. Too bad he didn’t remember any of it.

  What did he remember?

  His name was Reynard. He was over seven thousand years old. He currently lived at 2121 Wain Street, Apt. 3, in the Chalk Hill neighborhood of Shandar, a city-state on the coast of the South Sea. He had recently moved to Shandar with the intention of seducing Isabel d’Argent, a beautiful young painter and heiress to the d’Argent fortune. It wasn’t Isabel or even her family’s fortune he was really after but access to her father’s vast collection of rare maritime maps, amid which, he had reason to believe, was one that contained coded directions to the fabled lost treasure of the infamous pirate Blackhand Benedict. The most entertaining way to the map, he had decided, was via lovely Isabel.

  Posing as Renny Zoro, an expressionistic portraitist, he had inserted himself into Shandar’s art scene, and in three short weeks, he had not only won the heart and loins of Ms. d’Argent but enjoyed several visits to the d’Argent mansion in Shandar’s posh Bayside District, though he hadn’t been able to wangle a look at the maps. Caution was essential in this con; Isabel’s father, the shipping magnate Salvador d’Argent, was notorious for his ruthlessness and sadism. He was also one of the few people whose claim of descent from Blackhand Benedict was based on valid genealogical research (which wasn’t to say the other several hundred claimants were wrong; Benedict had had quite a fondness for the ladies, a fondness he pursued to its seedy conclusion even when the ladies weren’t interested).

  To complicate matters further, d’Argent, like his infamous ancestor (and like a lot of Shandar’s elite, for that matter) owed the bulk of his prosperity to illicit activities, including but by no means limited to piracy, smuggling, extortion, bribery, and almost certainly murder. He was smart, cunning, and could smell bullshit through a steel wall. A private army protected his mansion round the clock, and d’Argent himself was constantly at the center of a swarm of bodyguards led by d’Argent’s right-hand man, a scarred, muscle-knotted ex-con named Belgar Scurve.

  Despite all that, Reynard hadn’t been too concerned. He had handled scams far more dangerous than this a thousand times before, and he felt sure that his performance as Isabel’s love-struck suitor was convincing enough to fool even the canniest eye. The map, he had no doubt, would be in his hands within one month, tops.

  Could he have been wrong? Had he been found out?

  What had happened?

  He closed his eyes and cast his mind back to the last thing he could remember.

  It had been evening, around six p.m. He had been walking from his apartment to the Black Galley Gallery where Isabel was meeting with the owners about an upcoming show of her work. Once the meeting was over, he and Isabel planned to go out to dinner, then head back to her place for a night of “horizontal waltzing” (her favorite euphemism for sex).

  He cut down an alley that ended directly across the street from the gallery. Ahead of him, framed in the alley’s mouth, he saw Isabel’s cherry-red Arnko Cruiser parked along the curb. One of the new horseless vehicles that the dwarves were producing in their factories in the Silver Mountains, the Cruiser was a large boxy contraption made of steel and titanwood with Syrkranian gum tires and a large blackglass panel in the hood, beneath which lay the barrel-sized solarite crystal that powered the whole thing. It had been a birthday present from her father, and she drove it everywhere, basking in the awe and envy it aroused. Reynard, however, wasn’t particularly impressed. These new vehicles looked grand, but traveled barely eight miles an hour, which wasn’t substantially faster than a horse and carriage. One day, he was sure, the technology would improve and they would become worthwhile tools, but at this point they were primarily a status symbol, a new toy for the wealthy to flaunt.

  His musings on Isabel’s car had been interrupted by a sudden shuffle from behind a stack of crates he had just passed. As he started to turn, a hand seized the back collar of his crimson Jezebaran magistrate’s jacket, and then…

  That was it. Nothing else. He had no idea who grabbed him, what happened next, or how he ended up here. Or even where here might be.

  Time to find out.

  He rolled all the way over, the blanket sliding off him in the process, and discovered he was in a tastefully decorated living room, its small size suggesting it was part of an apartment rather than a house.

  In front of the couch was a dark walnut coffee table bearing a copy of the Shandar Free Press, a mug with a smear of lipstick on the rim, an abstract metal sculpture he thought resembled a pair of copulating stick figures, and a candlestick carved from what looked like giant-oyster shell. The pale green candle in the candlestick was scented: Sniffing, Reynard caught a quick whiff of athelas.

  Against the far wall sat a rocking chair and a small table on which sat a white ceramic solarite lamp shaped like a whale, a green cut-glass dish filled with individually wrapped candies, a stack of books, and a spiral-bound notebook with a pen clipped to the front cover.

  Behind and above the chair was a window, its thin white curtains bright with daylight. The faint, steady murmur of city life percolated in from outside. A framed print of Üster Hamaman’s The Cloud and the Wave hung on the wall beside it. Overhead, silent and still, was a black ceiling fan.

  This was all he could see without sitting up. The couch’s armrests blocked everything else from sight.

  The lavender smell he had detected earlier was coming from somewhere beyond the armrest by his feet, as were the occasional faint sounds of fabric rustling and footsteps padding across a carpet.

  The evidence suggested he was in a woman’s apartment. But what woman? He was sure he had never been in this room before, and—

  He caught a trace of another scent and froze.

  It was Solace.

  Ignoring the yowls of pain from nearly every portion of his body, he sat up and looked around.

  To his left was the front door, a sliding closet door, a framed sketch of a city street, and a side-table with an empty basket on it. To his right, at a right angle to the couch, was a matching leather chair, its seat heaped high with half a dozen cushions, which seemed odd and excessive until he realized that the pillows had no doubt been cleared off the couch to make room for him. Beyond the chair was a bookshelf crammed with books, a small attached kitchen whose wooden counter was being used primarily as extra shelf-space for books and various papers, and an archway that led further into the apartment. The sounds of movement and the scents of Solace and lavender were coming from beyond the archway.

  Teeth clenched against the pain, he swung his legs around to the front of the couch an
d pushed himself to his feet. The movement made blood bang in his head and dark purple blotches strobe in his vision. He swayed in place, arms outstretched to keep his balance, eyelids beating hard to blink away the lightheadedness.

  As the sensations passed and he checked himself over to make sure he hadn’t opened a wound or left a piece of himself behind on the couch, he noticed that he was still wearing what he remembered wearing last night except that his boots and jacket had been removed. Another, more careful scan of the room revealed his boots sitting on the hardwood floor next to the couch. Of his crimson jacket there was no sign.

  “You’re finally awake,” Solace said behind him.

  He turned. She stood in the archway, regarding him with a small, tentative smile, as if she weren’t sure he was well enough for a smile to be appropriate. She wore a black vest over a white silk shirt, and a black skirt over rainbow-striped toed tights. Her black hair was long and loose and had a pink streak running down the left side.

  “Hi,” he said, returning her smile, marveling at how natural and unremarkable it felt to see her. Though he had barely thought of her since their last encounter so long ago, everything about her—her face, her voice, the way she moved—remained as familiar to him as if they had just parted last week. He felt a sense of continuity, a thing he wasn’t used to in this ever-shifting, all-too-mortal world. By now Solace had become a periodic body in his personal solar system, like one of those comets whose vast orbits brought them within sight of Eridia once every thousand years, regular as clockwork.

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “Like someone used me to break rocks with.”

  Her smile flickered and her eyes darkened as some troubling thought or memory surfaced. Dread slithered in his gut. What had happened? What had she seen? What did she know?

  “Well, it’s good that you feel well enough to crack jokes,” she said. “Are you dizzy?”

  “Nope.”

  “Any nausea?”

  “No.”

  “That’s good,” she said with a small nod, not even remotely looking like someone who thought something was good. Her expression was now completely blank.

  “Uh, thanks for…” He held up his bandaged hands. “Whatever exactly you did. All and everything.”

  “Mm-hmm. Let me take a look.” She examined his hands, his swollen eye, his bruised cheeks. As she did so, he watched her face for any trace of anger or disappointment or anything else she might be feeling about whatever had happened, but her expression remained perfectly neutral.

  “You’re healing fast,” she said. “Are you hungry? I could get you something to eat.”

  He considered this. “Actually just a glass of water would be fine. I’m not really hungry, and I think my mouth’s too sensitive to chew right now anyway.”

  She briefly closed her eyes and gave a small sigh. Then she headed into the kitchen for the water. He sat back down on the couch.

  After a minute, she returned and handed him a mug that sported a picture of a galleon and the words “Shandar Maritime Fest 4900 A.C.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Without a word or nod in response, she sat down in the rocking chair and started rocking gently. For a couple of minutes the only sounds in the room were the sips and gulps of Reynard’s drinking and the rhythmic cricks and creaks from the chair. When the mug was empty, Reynard set it on the coffee table and settled back on the couch.

  “Thanks again,” he said, hoping to elicit some response.

  He thought she might have nodded, but the constant rocking motion made it hard to be sure. Either way, her gaze remained fixed on his face, her own face perfectly blank. Uncomfortable with the scrutiny, he pretended to examine his bandages and fiddled with their edges as if they demanded minor adjustments. Outside a carriage rattled past, the horses’ hooves clopping sharp and loud on what sounded like cobblestones. The presence of cobblestones didn’t tell him much about his location; half of Shandar was paved with the things.

  Suddenly the rocking chair’s creaks stopped. Reynard looked up to find Solace staring at him with eyes that glimmered with tears. Her lips were compressed into a thin, trembling line.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  “I thought you were fucking dead!” she snapped. The tears quivered in her eyes, but none broke free.

  He shook his head, completely at a loss. Did she mean recently, or when he disappeared on her in Colbon? “Uh, when?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Last night! When the bloody fuck else would I mean?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, a little more testily than he intended, her anger having precipitated his own.

  She shook her head and dropped her gaze to the carpet. “There was blood everywhere. There were puddles…” After a long pause, she heaved a shaky sigh and swiped away her still-unshed tears with the forearm of her shirt. After another, longer, pause she looked back up at him.

  “You don’t even remember how you got here, do you?” she said.

  “Uh, well, no.”

  She nodded, and then, after taking a long, deep, calming breath, she proceeded to tell him.

  At around nine-thirty the previous night, as she was walking home alone down Medallion Street after dinner and drinks with a friend (whose gender she avoided specifying), she spotted a man lying supine on the sidewalk in the mouth of an alley up ahead. She cautiously approached and found it was Reynard. He had been beaten so badly she almost didn’t recognize him.

  She knelt down and felt his neck for a pulse. She couldn’t find one. Nor did he seem to be breathing: His chest did not rise and fall, and no sounds emerged from his mouth or nostrils. He appeared quite dead.

  Just as she was about to let go of his neck and stand up, she felt a faint flutter beneath her fingers. An instant later his chest rose and a thick, unpleasant rattle came from his throat, startling her so badly she yelped and jumped back, nearly falling.

  She called his name. He didn’t respond, though he was visibly breathing now. She looked around in search of potentially helpful passersby, but the street was empty except for a few carriages rolling past on Nackle Avenue three blocks north. She saw a trail of blood stretching away into the alley’s shadowy depths; it looked as if he had dragged himself out onto the sidewalk.

  She called his name again. This time his eyelids fluttered and he made a faint, incoherent sound.

  She squatted and pulled open his right eyelid. The pupil contracted, then the eye swiveled toward her face. The other eye opened a crack.

  “Whuh?” he said.

  “Reynard.”

  He blinked. A clot of blood was gumming the lashes of his left eye together and preventing the eye from opening very far. Solace swiped the clot away with her thumb.

  “Reynard, how do you feel? Can you move?”

  More blinking. Then his eyes focused on her in a way they hadn’t before.

  “Sullis?” he said.

  “Yes. It’s me. Can you move?”

  “Uh?” He frowned as if the question were beyond understanding.

  She stood up again, looked around again, saw no one again, then sighed in frustration.

  “I’m going to go find someone to call a biomage,” she told him.

  “Nuh!” He shook his head hard enough to make himself grimace in pain.

  “What? Why not? Reynard, you need a biomage.”

  His only response was to repeat, “Nuh.”

  She stood there, indecisive. She glanced up and down the street once more. Still no signs of life except the distant traffic. When she looked back down at Reynard, he was squirming about as if trying to walk with his buttocks and shoulder blades.

  “Are you sure you should be moving?” she said.

  “Needa gedda shelder,” he said.

  She squatted beside him again, wobbling precariously on her high heels. Annoyed, she plucked off the shoes and stuffed them into her purse, not letting herself care that she was now standing in his blood in only her stocki
ngs.

  “What hurts?” she said. “Be specific.”

  He stopped squirming and considered the question, eyes drifting in and out of focus as he did so. Finally he met her gaze and with a trace of a smile said, “Ev’rything.”

  “I’m serious, Reynard.”

  “So’m I.”

  She looked around one final time, hoping against hope that a last-minute appearance by a conveniently passing biomage would wrest the decision from her indecisive shoulders, but there was only the street, the silent buildings, the streaks and puddles of blood gleaming faintly orange in the glow of the street lamps.

  “Helb m’up,” he said, extending a blood-streaked hand toward her.

  “Reynard…”

  “C’mon.”

  She heaved a sigh that was equal parts uncertainty and irritation, then stood up, grasped his forearm, and pulled. He weighed a good forty pounds more than she did, and since his feeble efforts to raise himself did little to help, his mostly dead weight caused her to slide in his blood. Her feet skidded toward him, gaining speed by the second. She felt the soles of her stockings begin to abrade away against the pavement.

  “Damn it, Reynard!” she snapped, her fear of falling manifesting as anger. “Help me! Push!”

  He saw what was happening and redoubled his efforts, though with a clear cost to himself: As he levered himself up, his face bunched in pain, and a groan was torn from his throat.

  But it worked. There was a complex blur of motion, and before Solace knew what was happening, she was steady again, and he was upright. At least for the moment: He swayed about as if trying to decide which way to fall.

  Before he could, she swept an arm around his shoulders and draped one of his arms over her own shoulders.

  “Come on,” she said. “Walk slowly.”

  He did, frowning with great concentration at his feet as he moved them forward, first one, then the other, down one block, then the next, then turning right.

  And it was there, at the corner of Medallion and Crater Lane, that he suddenly stopped. Not noticing, she continued moving forward until his inertia wrenched her to a halt. She turned, and was puzzled to find him just standing there with his lips pooched out and his mouth working as if he were tasting fine wine.

  He turned to one side, leaned over a little, and spat out a bloody wad. Solace thought she caught a glimpse of something white inside the wad, and was sure she heard a faint clack as it splatted on the pavement.

  “By the Twelve, Reynard,” she said. “What happened to you?”

  He made a mumbly noise and shook his head.

  They arrived at her apartment five minutes later. While she fished her keys from her purse, he slumped against the brick façade, his eyes half shut, leaning over every now and again to spit out more blood. He seemed unwilling to look at her.

  Inside, she helped him climb the stairs to her apartment. He sat on the toilet in semi-conscious silence while she treated his numerous wounds. Then she led him to the living room and put him to bed on the couch. He fell asleep (or lapsed into unconsciousness) almost instantly. She stayed awake for over an hour to make sure he would be okay. When she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer, she shuffled off to bed.

  “Do you remember anything at all about what happened?” she asked him now, her expression closed, unreadable, all trace of her tears long gone.

  He shrugged. “Not much. I remember I was on my way to meet a friend, and as I cut down the alley, someone grabbed me from behind. That’s all I know. I guess it was just an especially brutal robbery.” He gestured at himself. “I mean, they took my jacket. My wallet was in it.”

  “No, I hung your jacket in the closet. Your wallet was still inside. I didn’t open it, but it looked…pretty fat.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Huh. I guess…I don’t know, then…”

  “It looked to me as if someone was trying their hardest to kill you. Can you think of anyone who would want to do that?”

  He shook his head, beginning to feel annoyed by her cool, remote manner. It was like being questioned by a judge. “I know a few people who don’t like me very much, but not so badly they’d want to rearrange my face. It was probably just some crazy street person hopped up on devil grass or something.”

  “Hm. Maybe.” She regarded him thoughtfully for a moment. “Maybe we should report this to the Watch, if only to—”

  “Oh, no no no,” he said, trying to sound blasé. “I wouldn’t bother. I mean, I can’t give them any real information about anything, so I’d just be wasting their time. Besides, I heal fast. It’s okay.”

  One corner of her mouth curled up in a sort of sad, bitter smile. She looked almost disappointed. He had to resist the urge to squirm.

  “What have you been up to, Reynard?” she said.

  “What? I—”

  “Why didn’t you want me to call a biomage?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  He shook his head with a slight frown, as if the rationale behind the question mystified him.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t remember what I was thinking at the time.”

  Her left eyebrow rose.

  “I was half dead,” he protested. “I mean, who knows what kind of weird nonsense was burbling through my brain?”

  She continued staring at him for a moment. Then with a tiny sigh, she shifted her gaze to a spot on the floor to his left.

  “I guess that makes sense,” she muttered. She resumed rocking, keeping her eyes fixed on the floor.

  Reynard cursed himself for not having handled this better. Normally he would have come up with smoother responses to her questions, maybe concocted a fantastic story to account for every detail and seeming discrepancy. But right now his head was fuzzy, his thoughts sluggish. Which wasn’t surprising: Given his condition when she found him and the amount of time that had passed since then—and hence the amount of healing he had done—he must have been in worse shape than he had ever been in before. He suspected he had indeed been technically dead for a short time.

  After watching her rock in silence for a minute, Reynard craned his head forward and squinted a little till he could read the spines of the books on the table beside her.

  The Shen Mystery Scroll: Complete and Annotated, edited by Sha Iodreppia. In Plain Sight: The History of the Shen Mystery Scroll by Salima Turnival. The Shen Mountains: An Illustrated Journey by Cloot vip Skederwold. Ghosts of Mount Benta by Mastrid Angelo. Authors Unknown: A New Interpretation of the Shen Mystery Scroll by D. R. Hunter. Full of Secrets: The Scroll Unveiled by Viggo Platz.

  “A fan of the Scroll, eh?” he said.

  “They’re for a class.” Her eyes never wavered from the floor.

  “You’re taking classes?”

  “I’m teaching classes.”

  “Oh.” He blinked at her, surprised for some reason. Perhaps sensing this, she finally deigned to look at him, her eyes cool, perhaps even a little hostile.

  “I teach Age of Chaos Literature at the University,” she said.

  “Nice,” he said. He waited until she had returned her gaze to the floor, and then, trying to keep a smile from his face, said, “So, what do you think about the poems in the middle section? I know a lot of people dismiss them as being too trite, but while that’s true, I think they’re very important to the work as a whole because they demonstrate the poet’s growing mastery of various poetic forms. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that while their content is rather bland and clichéd, on a strictly technical level those poems are arguably the best in the scroll.”

  By the time he was done speaking, Solace had stopped rocking and was staring at him as if he had just yanked his head off his neck, bounced it against the wall a few times, then stuck it back into place.

  Finally she frowned a little and said, almost grudgingly, “That’s…a good point. I didn’t realize you were much of a reader.”

  “I read a lot, actually.” And that was true. He neve
r used to read, regarding it as a complete waste of time; he felt the world was far too interesting and full of possibilities to live vicariously. But a few centuries ago he had had to familiarize himself with as much ancient literature as he could as part of a scam against a scholar. He had been shocked by how much he enjoyed reading. But he supposed he shouldn’t have been. Had he stopped to think about it, he would have realized that stripped to its core, most writing was merely the stringing together of words and ideas to influence the mind of another person. In other words, it was a con.

  “I have to admit, I’m a little surprised,” she said. “I mean, it’s not that I don’t think you’re intelligent. It’s just…you don’t seem the bookish type.”

  “Well, I’m not one of those people who surround themselves with books. I don’t read for the mere sake of reading. I’m…selective.”

  “I see,” she said quietly, frowning. He sensed cautiousness about her, as if she were reluctant to pursue the conversation further. Maybe she was afraid it would soften her attitude toward him when she wanted to remain a frigid hardass.

  “So what’s your favorite?” he asked.

  “My favorite what?”

  “Poem. From the Scroll.”

  She opened her mouth to answer, closed it, then shook her head like someone trying to snap themselves out of a trance.

  “Look, Reynard,” she said, “much as the Scroll is one of my favorite subjects, I’m just not in the mood to discuss it right now.”

  “You don’t want to discuss anything with me, do you?”

  She gasped in exasperation and rolled her eyes. Without looking at him, she snapped, “Look, I’m sorry if I’m not in a particularly chatty mood, okay? Running across someone half dead and drenched in blood and then having—” She cut herself off, perhaps to prevent herself from saying something she would regret, and sat very still for a moment, eyes closed, lips pressed tight. Then, very quietly, she took a deep breath and said, “Why don’t I get you something to eat.”

  “I’m not really very hungry.”

  “Even so, I’m sure your body could use the nourishment. You haven’t eaten anything in over twelve hours.”

  “But—”

  But she was already rising and heading to the kitchen. “I have some shnozzberry sauce. That stuff’s packed with vitamins and minerals. It’s just what you need.”

  In silence, he watched her pour out a bowl of shnozzberry sauce from a jar in the refrigerator, plunk a spoon into it, and carry it over to him.

  “Seriously,” he said. “I’m really not hungry.”

  “You need to eat,” she said flatly, holding the bowl in front of him with a stubborn expression that made it clear she wouldn’t budge until he took it.

  He took it. The moment the first spoonful touched his tastebuds, his stomach clenched with hunger, and he devoured the rest in huge swift scoops. After giving him the bowl, Solace had moved off to straighten up a few things that needed no straightening, and the minute he finished, she came back and took the empty bowl. Without being asked, she brought him another bowl of sauce, which he wolfed down the same way.

  While Solace washed the bowl and the spoon, he probed his mouth’s ridges and crannies with his tongue to clear away the bits of shnozzberry skin before they could get wedged too deeply in the numerous small wounds in his gums, lips, and cheeks, including the tender wet hole where one of his teeth had been. Judging by past experience, it would be a decade or two before a new tooth grew in.

  Solace shut off the water. He expected her to return to her seat, but instead she vanished through the archway without even glancing at him and thumped about in other rooms for awhile.

  He had started to doze off when she returned.

  “You can use the shower if you want,” she said, her face and voice once again artfully blank. “I imagine you probably need it. I set out some spare towels, along with bandages and some stuff to treat your injuries. The bathroom’s through there.” She gestured at the archway.

  “Thanks,” he told her, surprised by the offer. He pushed himself to his feet, exaggerating the difficulty a little, hoping she would offer to help him to the bathroom and then, if he played this right, help him undress and shower and who knew what else, but she moved past him to her chair without another glance and sat down.

  He hobbled to the archway. Beyond it was a short hallway with three doors. Two of the doors were shut tight. The third led to the bathroom.

  He stepped inside, flicked on the light, and shut the door. The bathroom walls were light blue, and a canary yellow rug sat in the middle of the black-and-white tiled floor. The white shower curtain was decorated with cartoon frogs leaping about or perched on lily pads. On the toilet tank was a bowl full of potpourri, the origin of the lavender scent he had been smelling since he woke up. Given how strong the scent was, she must have set it out fairly recently, no doubt after she realized she had an unwanted guest on her hands who might—heaven forbid!—smell the normal odors of human habitation. Indeed, a look in the trashcan next to the sink revealed the potpourri’s wrapper and a receipt dated this morning. She had spent a whole two decans on him. How sweet.

  After examining the items Solace had laid out—a red towel and washcloth, a roll of gauze, antibiotic ointment, rubbing alcohol, and cotton balls—he dared a glance into the mirror.

  He winced at the sight of his face. The skin around his left eye was swollen and shiny and the color of an eggplant. Both cheeks and most of his jaw were bruised and pocked with small angular marks. The skin had split down both the middle of his right eyebrow and the right side of his upper lip, and though these wounds were mostly healed, they still looked raw and ugly.

  Leaning in over the sink, he examined the weird pock marks more closely in the mirror. A few of them, the clearest ones, were perfect triangles with round indentations in the center. Why did that seem so familiar? He wasn’t sure, and knew from experience that trying to force the memory probably wouldn’t work, so he set the matter on his mental back burner for the time being.

  He stripped off his clothes to discover that his body looked as bad as his face. His entire torso was mottled purple and yellow, except for a few spots his assailant(s) must’ve forgotten to punch. The outer layers of skin on his knees and elbows had been abraded away as if he had been dragged across concrete. He peeled the bandages off his hands and marveled at the scab-caked knuckles beneath. Thank the Twelve he healed fast; if he were a normal man he would still be dripping blood everywhere. No, wait; if he were a normal man, he would be in the morgue.

  Showering was an unpleasant adventure. When the hot water hit his various scrapes and sores the brief flare of pain was so bad he couldn’t breathe for a second. And it took him forever to wash himself; most of his body was still so sensitive he had to dab on the soap with gentle pats of the washcloth.

  It was while he was toweling off, again with gentle pats, that he remembered where he had seen that triangular pattern before. It was from a ring, a silver ring with a small round emerald set in its triangular face, a ring worn by Belgar Scurve, Salvador d’Argent’s chief bodyguard. Scurve never wiped his butt without his boss’s say-so, which meant d’Argent himself had almost certainly arranged the assault on Reynard.

  No, not just an assault. This had been an attempted murder. It would have been murder if Reynard had been a normal man, but thankfully no one in Shandar knew that Reynard was an immortal.

  He glanced at the closed bathroom door.

  Well, almost no one.

  He set to work hatching a new plan to acquire d’Argent’s map. This plan wouldn’t be as oblique and harmless as the old one. No, this one would do maximum damage. This one would bring d’Argent’s whole world crashing down around him like a cheap chandelier.

  As ideas arose and changed and coalesced in his racing mind, he finished toweling off, then treated his wounds, repeatedly choking back gasps at the rubbing alcohol’s deep, sharp bite. The tube of ointment, which started out half full, en
ded up squeezed flat and in the trash.

  He slowly dressed, wincing as fabric scraped across his body’s more sensitive spots, then just stood there a while, staring soberly at the closed bathroom door, at the approximate spot where Solace sat in her living room.

  He couldn’t stay, he realized. He wished otherwise, wished he could take the time to thaw her out, to melt her heart and ultimately other, more interesting body parts. But he couldn’t afford to right now. He was about to effectively wage war on a major crime lord, and while there was no way of knowing for sure how events would play out, things would likely get quite brutal. No one around him would be safe. If d’Argent learned about Solace, he would use her as leverage or worse against Reynard. And Reynard couldn’t allow that to happen.

  Maybe when everything was done and the dust had settled he could get back in touch with her. Maybe. But for now, he had to just go, before anyone could connect Solace with him.