Death's Collector

by Bill McCurry

  Dark bookshelves covered two walls, filling the room with the smells of leather and wax. A charming array of hand weapons hung on the other two walls. “Pres, I assumed you could spell out a few words, but you seem to be a scholar. I see at least three books I’ve never heard of.”

  He finished pouring wine. “That’s only because bars and brothels have much smaller libraries.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. I’ll pay respects to your mother soon, but before we get interrupted, I have something from Desh.”

  “Wait, I’ll send for Ella.”

  “What?” I turned as if she might be standing behind me. She wasn’t, but my elbow knocked over the wine.

  Pres chuckled and waved to a servant. “Ella’s here. If fact, Desh sent her here. He said I’d need somebody I trust when you arrived. If being cryptic is a quality of good sorcerers, Desh must be one of the best.”

  I started breathing. “Well… sure, why don’t you ask Ella to come on in?”

  Pres spoke to the guard at the door and sent him off. A few minutes later, Ella walked in and gave me a little smile. “You’ve arrived at last. I’ve enjoyed visiting with His Majesty, but I do not care to spend the entire winter here.”

  “I love you, and I missed you too.”

  She flinched and stared at me.

  I laughed. “For once, you don’t know what to say.”

  She and Pres both laughed with me, and she said, “I have missed your robust sense of mirth.”

  “I’ve missed it too. Sit over here. Desh sent me to do something, but he might have bumbled it. It could convince Pres he’s as powerful as a god. Or make him want to farm melons. Either way, having people he trusts around him will help.”

  I showed them the false hand that I intended to fit onto Pres’s arm. However, I couldn’t answer a single one of their questions since Desh hadn’t told me a damned thing about it. Ella demanded that the entire procedure be abandoned until Desh came to explain himself. Pres thanked her for her concern, told me to go ahead, and rolled up his sleeve.

  I broke the wax on the bottle. The trapped power flowed out, and I pulled a green band before starting to work. I had to begin shaping the stump just as if I were building a new hand out of flesh.

  “Is it supposed to look like that?” Ella asked.

  “Hush. If I go too fast, he won’t be able to make obscene gestures with it,” I said.

  “We wouldn’t have this problem now if you—” She looked away.

  I tried not to finish that sentence in my head.

  “Go ahead,” Pres said. “It’s not your fault.”

  I couldn’t help laughing at how foolish that statement was, especially for somebody who’s supposed to be wise, like a king. I paused, thinking that if I had more power, I could restore his real hand.

  Why didn’t Desh do this procedure himself? His explanation about trust was bullshit. Ella didn’t trust me worth a damn where Pres was concerned, and that poisoned all the trust in the room. Desh was a careful sorcerer. Everything he did had a reason. For some reason, he wanted me to fit this hand, and the most logical reason was that he’d made some sort of trade. The sort that he couldn’t tell me about, because part of the deal was that I couldn’t be told what I was supposed to do. The gods loved that kind of idiotic crap.

  Preparing Pres for the false hand was a bit like healing, and that meant Gorlana was probably involved. What had Gorlana told me or given me that I might use in some way now?

  “Is there a problem?” Pres asked.

  “Just stop right now if there is!” Ella said.

  “No, everything is fine. Just thought a sneeze was coming on.”

  I stood up and walked to the weapons on the wall, grabbed a short ax, and sat back at the table. I swung the weapon and chopped the claw off my left arm, right at the wrist. Blood splattered on all three of us. It hurt like a son of a bitch, and I cursed like one. I knew what to expect, and it still shocked me. Ella screamed and snatched the ax away. I guess she thought I’d chop off my other hand while I was holding the ax with it. Pres was on his feet and shouting something.

  I didn’t care. Gorlana had traded me the power I used to make that claw, and when I severed it, the power seeped back into me. Normally, power would never return when destroying something, so this must have been the deal Desh had made with her.

  “Sit down, son!”

  Pres said, “You ass-hopping whore!” Pres had benefited from his time with Baldir. He sat down.

  I breathed deep and pulled some more green bands while my wrist bled on the table. Within five minutes, I had restored Pres’s hand. I leaned back and sighed, wiping off sweat. Ella was bandaging my wrist with something, I didn’t much care what. Pres paid no attention to his new hand. Instead, he yelled something at the guard, and then they ran out of the room together. I wasn’t following the details around me with much care.

  “That was insane!” Ella said, wrapping the bandage fast, like she was churning butter.

  “I expect it was. Running all over the country killing people is insane, but I do that too.”

  “You didn’t need to maim yourself to impress me!”

  “I didn’t do it for you. But I’m flattered you think I’m romantic enough to. I figured you’d love me just for being me. And because I’ve been away a long time.” I shrugged, and I winced when the shrug bumped my wrist against the table.

  Ella looked confused, which was understandable. She’d been caught up in one deal with the gods, and maybe more than one. Right now, her view of the world might be changing in a hurry. She sat next to me and held my remaining hand with her two bloody ones. “You should not make such statements about love.”

  “I know. I thought maybe you wouldn’t blame me so much for Pres’s hand now.”

  “I have forgiven you. Forgiven you entirely, long before you returned today.”

  “So…” I stopped myself from shrugging and raised my eyebrows instead.

  “Bib, I married Sir Linkan last summer.”

  That shouldn’t be a problem, because even with one hand, I could kill that fart seven times before lunch. I almost said that, and the thought of his head rolling across the floor gave me a pleasant tingle. But she was gazing at me, patient and kind of wary, and I couldn’t quite promise to make her a widow by the afternoon.

  I had expected way too much from Ella. She wasn’t what I’d call my ideal woman, but I couldn’t think of anything I’d change about her. Now that I looked hard at it, though, there must be a thousand things about me that needed changing.

  But Linkan, that mincing old mustache that walked like a man? By Harik, Fingit, and Krak, I’d never understand that.

  I felt hollowed out, like there wasn’t enough stuff inside me to fill out my skin. I had done a mountain of foolish things in my life, and I could pile this one on top with the rest.

  Ella patted my hand, and I realized I’d left her alone in the conversation while I contemplated murder and woe.

  “I can’t say I’m happy about it, but I hope you are. Linkan… well, I won’t say anything about him.” I smiled. “What do you want for a wedding present? A whorehouse?”

  Ella leaned over and kissed me hard and long. When we paused, I asked her to clarify her behavior, but she kissed me again before I finished the first word.

  At last, I said, “So you won’t object when I stab your husband in the heart?”

  “Husband! I would never marry that man! Not even if he were made of gold and his mustache made of rubies. How can you consider such a thing?”

  “Mainly because you said, ‘I married Sir Linkan.’”

  “Bah! Can you imagine me confined every day to his sad manor, directing servants, drinking tea, sewing? For the sake of all the gods, playing the spinet?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Raising his children?”

  Or bearing his children, which she couldn’t do. I didn’t intend to mention that, but we both knew she was saying it. “Why in the name of the king’
s drawers did you say you were married? I could have killed him.”

  “But you didn’t kill him. You composed yourself and offered congratulations as would any civilized man who is merely thinking about murder. I’m proud of you.”

  “So, it was a test? If I kill Linkan, then I’m still a murdering animal, but if I don’t, then I may be worthy of walking within ten feet of your radiant self?” I was mad and trying to make her mad too. It’s one of the reasons I’m hard to live with.

  “No, your actions didn’t matter a sliver. Well, I would have prevented you from killing Linkan. But I love you regardless of your decision. I simply enjoyed seeing you squirm.”

  I looked at the ceiling for a moment. It was an abrupt change of attitude, true, but I didn’t think it was false. Gorlana had undoubtedly veiled me in Ella’s sight when I agreed to let the goddess take her, and today’s bizarre events had lifted that veil.

  I sighed. “It’s a ridiculous thing to say, but all of this was almost fun.”

  The next time we stopped kissing, the physician had arrived and was standing back against the wall. He was blushing and looked like he wanted to go find some other patient anywhere else in the castle but here.

  Smiling, Pres clapped his hands. “Come on, stop that! You’ve bled enough on the rug already. It’s an heirloom.”

  I watched Ella chat with Pres while the physician dealt with my wrist. Ella looked over at me. “What about the false hand? Can you wear it?”

  “It would be awkward. Desh made it for Pres’s right hand, and I’m missing a left. I’d knock my steak on the floor every time I tried to cut a bite.”

  “Can’t you do something? Something sorcerer-like?”

  “Of course I can. I can shut up and not whine about it. What I’d like to point out is the fact that you did fall in love with me from a distance, so my plan worked after all. You’ve got to admit now that I am a superior planner. So, where are we going?”

  Ella stepped back and peered like I was some new kind of creature. “What do you mean, where?”

  “Where do you want to go?” I pointed at two walls, and then at the other two. “What do you want to do? What are your ambitions?” I grabbed her hand.

  “Do you want to travel with me? I didn’t believe that you would.” She stepped away but didn’t let go of my hand. “I thought that either I must go with you, or we’d go different ways. And I’m not one to simply go along.” She said it the way she’d state an indisputable fact, the same way she’d state that the sun will burn you red.

  I laughed hard, the way I’d needed to for years. “And I wouldn’t change that about you, not for a horse that flies and pisses whiskey. I will stay for as long as you can stand me. Go where you want. I don’t need much, as long as I can bring this stupid sword along. Besides, any place we go will have people that need to get killed.”

  Read Death’s Baby Sister

  Sequel to Death’s Collector

  The gods hate them, so they can’t

  afford to hate each other.

  Bib the sorcerer, the most accomplished murderer of his time, finds his simple, gently-alcoholic retirement crushed when an untrained sorcerer girl plops onto his doorstep.

  The girl, Manon, is as unpredictable and deadly as a volcano, but otherwise like any twelve-year-old—she hates everybody and refuses to do as she’s told.

  Bib fumes but agrees to take Manon someplace safe where she can learn not to turn people into sand or make it rain whales.

  They flee from a crusade of sorcerer-killing zealots, who burn and mutilate their way across the countryside. The cruel Goddess of the Unknowable reaches out to claim Manon and destroy Bib. The petty God of Death demands that Bib kill the girl, and Bib calls him an eyeball-scraping nugget of filth, which means no—for now.

  An overworked, intra-planar monster, a mad, city-burning sorcerer, and some pretentious flunkies called “Death’s Riders” enter the chase. Bib and Manon both run from multiple murderous threats—including each other.

  As paths of escape become fewer and narrower, Bib and Manon must each decide what they’re willing to sacrifice to vanquish their enemies and save themselves.

  And if they can’t both be saved, decide which one of them will die.

  Get it at Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/deathsbabysister

  Read Wee Piggies of Radiant Might

  Companion Novel to Death’s Collector

  Godhood isn’t as much fun as it used to be.

  The idiot gods are being driven into feckless insanity—and they weren’t all that stable to start with. An unexplained force severs the gods from a worshipful mankind, leaving them dim, flabby, and decidedly less immortal. Their eternal enemy now chases them in and out of other realities as if they were frantic bunnies.

  The Blacksmith of the Gods, Fingit, has been mocked by his fellow gods since the beginning of time. But now only he is still lucid enough to conceive a scheme to save them and maybe reality itself.

  Fingit contrives a plan so clever that if anyone dies it won’t be him. But the most deranged being in the universe, his sister Sakaj, drags him into her own lunatic scheme.

  Fingit must outwit Sakaj, defeat their incomprehensibly powerful foes, overcome the force thrusting them into oblivion, and grapple with the most singular problem of all—while the gods have been gone, has mankind cared?

  In fact, has mankind even noticed?

  Get it at Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/weepiggiesbook

  Connect with the Author

  Visit his website at bill-mccurry.com

  or on Social Media:

  About the Author

  Bill McCurry holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and a Master of Arts in Sociology from the University of Texas in Arlington. He is one of seven people known to have received a non-academic job using a sociology degree. Bill’s short story “The Santa Fix” was published by Open Heart Publishing’s anthology An Honest Lie: Volume 3. He has performed and taught improv and interactive theater for over twenty years. During his career, Bill has owned a small construction company, run market research projects, managed customer service groups, and developed computer systems as a contractor for the National Cancer Institute. He is currently writing his seventh novel, Death’s Least Favorite Toy. Bill grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, and now lives in Carrollton, Texas, with his wife, Kathleen, an independent court reporter who is so keenly determined that she would always be able to kill him if it came to a knife fight.