Sired by Stone

by Andrew Post

  Next to him, though, Nevele looked about as grave as she did when she’d been suspended between the frigate and the Praise to Her by a thin rope. She gave Clyde a motion indicating that his sword was still inside the crashed starship behind them and moved forward to assist Aksel with the oncoming pirates.

  Once her betrothed had ducked inside, she turned to face their attackers, expression shifting into a hard sneer as she began unspooling herself to gather small heaps of thread into her waiting, open hands.

  The two beleaguered pirates emerged from the boxy mass of metal bars that’d been their ship, but the stinging snaps of her tendrils drove them back into cover. She plodded forward, fully free from cover and apparently not caring, recalled the threads, and brought them thunderously back down again.

  One pirate took the strike to the hand and dropped his gun. His partner dragged him down behind a sand mound.

  Nevele didn’t hesitate, stepping headlong toward the fray.

  Head still spinning, Aksel chased along behind her with nothing but his bare hands to protect himself or her. Some part of him said she wouldn’t need the help anyway.

  One of her arms flew up, and the trailing mass of coiled thread arced high. With it still swinging, she stepped directly into their sand cover with them. Answering their alarmed cries, she brought her arms down, panels of flesh popping free, and rendered one man into a screaming pinwheel, launching him several yards. Nevele ignored the other one’s pleas, slamming him flat into the sand with the return swipe, etching a deep slash down his face.

  The man tried to get up, shielding his face but unable to hide the twisted terror.

  With wild eyes in an otherwise bland expression, Nevele raised her other arm, more of her face falling away, a long stretch of her threads craning back . . . and back . . .

  “Nevele,” Clyde said, stumbling free of the Praise to Her, seeing what she was about to do. He sounded more confused than anything, as if unsure he even knew this woman.

  The pirate, profusely bleeding from a half-flayed face, cowered on his knees before her.

  Her cheek fell away. A part of her chin. Red underneath.

  Blood dribbled through the pirate’s fingers, diluted pink by tears.

  “They almost killed you, Clyde,” she said.

  Aksel watched, heart in his throat.

  Clyde seemed, in that moment, scared to approach.

  The pirate begged unintelligibly.

  Her threads crawled along the sand, zigzagging a path to him as if ushered along of their own accord. They slithered up the pirate’s legs, waist, and torso and found his neck—and began to wrap around and around and around.

  “Nevele,” Clyde shouted, moving in with Commencement.

  Her lips and a portion of the other cheek fell, flopping to the sand. Under her blank countenance as more fell away, bare teeth smiled broadly. Absently, she watched the threads work.

  “Nevele, stop.”

  Rushing in, Clyde cut through the lines with a downward sweep, dropping the pirate, gasping and clutching at both a split face and a purpled neck, to the ground.

  “What are you doing?”

  Remaining still, Nevele’s threads retreated to her. With a shaking hand, she bent and picked up one, then another piece of her face, pressing them to where they belonged until the threads could take over holding. When her bottom lip reattached, it trembled immediately.

  “Now you know what I am,” she said, sputtering. “Might as well own it, be just like my brother.” She looked at him finally, eyes wet. “I don’t need to pretend anymore.”

  “You’re my Nevele,” Clyde said, voice raw. He took her by the shoulders. “You’re not a killer.”

  She looked down, hair hanging in her restored face. “I am, though.”

  The pirate, on hands and knees, freed a hand from his shredded cheek to pick up his fallen sidearm.

  “Watch out,” Aksel shouted, reaching with one hand as one does when something bad is about to happen—as if some sudden ability would hopefully rise in him, a dormant fabrick of his own, to make the bad thing stop.

  Clyde and Nevele turned.

  The pirate took unsteady aim at Nevele.

  And with a finger on the trigger, the pirate kept steady . . . ready to fire . . . then did nothing. Just stood there, aiming, not blinking, staring at them, ready but not doing anything.

  At his temples, the hair began to gray.

  Wrinkles pressed themselves into his face, sliding in around his wound that now began to knit shut and scar over.

  The gun in his hand developed a rash of brown rust and crumbled in his frozen, outstretched hand.

  His clothes faded, faded, became threadbare rags.

  The pirate’s flesh became saggy, gray. His hair blew from the top of his head, leaving a silver horseshoe, and even that soon fell away. A soft tremor in the next desert breeze whooshed away in a knotty cloud, leaving only unlaced boots to mark his last stand.

  Aksel swallowed. Had he really just seen that?

  Clyde and Nevele turned, blanching at having noticed something behind Aksel. Just as the Bullet Eater turned around, throat locked, mind reeling from seeing a man turn to dust, a voice came—accented heavily by a Lakebed drawl.

  “What were ya doin’ standin’ there like that? He was gonna shoot y’all. You know that, right?”

  An old man stood on the sooty wing of the Praise to Her, clothed in battered leather and rough industrial-grade rubber. A long beard hung to his belt, and his eyes were blue and wet and not unkindly, squinting down at them. Aksel recognized something within that wrinkled mug, and those clothes . . .

  The old man jumped down. Trailing from an exploded satchel on his back, nigh-invisible cords ended at scraps of white silk. A shredded parachute.

  As if also under some kind of frozen-in-place spell, Aksel, Clyde, and Nevele watched as the old man carefully picked his way down the hill to them, chuckling softly to himself.

  When he approached the dumbfounded trio, a frisk mouse popped up in his breast pocket—who appeared absolutely petrified, whiskers flicking about wildly before saucer eyes.

  “Rohm?” Clyde said, breathless. Then, to the old man, “Emer? You’re . . . ?”

  The old man tipped an imaginary ten-gallon hat. “Ernest Höwerglaz, yes, indeedy. Pleasure to meet ya, truthfully this time.”

  The man reached up to scratch Rohm’s ear, and Aksel noticed the number eight tattooed on the back of his hand. But when he lowered it to his side, Aksel realized it wasn’t an eight but a lemniscate, the infinity symbol.

  On unsteady legs, Clyde approached Höwerglaz. “You were with us the entire time? But how is that possible? If you’re Höwerglaz and he’s who knows how old, how was it the man who shot you was your father?”

  Höwerglaz cocked his head. “You really that gullible? Ever notice that poacher never addressed me as Son, nor did I ever call him Daddy?” He chuckled. “Buncha crap, all of it. Shoot, mah daddy’s been dead for goin’ on sixty thousand years now.”

  “But why . . . why were you even with them? I . . . I don’t understand. Why didn’t you . . . ? Did you know I was looking for you?”

  “Sure did.”

  “Why didn’t you say something earlier, then? We’re running out of time.”

  “Well, way I see it, when ya been ’round long as me, ya start to get bored. Antsy-like. I been with every group that Gleese has to offer, every club and outfit under the suns. Some made up of nice fellers, others not so much. Heard ya were lookin’ fer me. Decided I’d arrange a meet—juss one you weren’t privy to, heh. To see what ya were made of. Just so happened the poachers were recruitin’, lookin’ fer strappin’ young men willin’ to do a lot of work and not bellyache too much about skinny pay. Knew ya’d be comin’ ’long soon enough, so I suggested to my new fellow poacher men we try lookin’ for sky whales in that particular area, have us cross paths, accidental-like.”

  “But how did you know?”

  Höwerglaz looked in
to Clyde’s face, growing serious. Then he laughed, a rascally he-he. “Don’t worry yerself too much on that. I juss knew.”

  “But—” Clyde started.

  “Worked out pretty dern good too, dinnit? Feller shootin’ me down and leavin’ me for dead like that. Otherwise I woulda had to find some other way to join up with ya. Kill ’em, I guess.” He shrugged. “But I reckon that probably would’ve been off-puttin’, you bein’ the squeamish sort an’ all.”

  Aksel watched Clyde run his gaze over the disassembled starship, the pirate’s boots brimming with powdered pirate. “Why didn’t you help us earlier? If you could do that”—he waved at the time-sponged starship—“or that”—the boots—“was it really necessary to wait so long?”

  “Had to see if ya were interestin’. I ain’t gonna help nobody if they caint liven things up ’round here. And if ya weren’t willin’ to down somebody—or somethin’, like a rocky crawler, by way of example—well, I wasn’t gonna assist. Still, I freed ya from havin’ to go through with it since none of these fellers were worth the privilege of tastin’ that particular blade of yours. Better to save that for someone more deservin’.”

  “Like Pitka Gorett and Dreck Javelin?”

  “Sure. Why not? Still, now that I know ya got it in ya, that potential, consider me considerin’.” Wink. “Yer name, top of the short list, by gum.”

  “So you’ll help . . . if you find I’m interesting enough?”

  “Yep.”

  Clyde palmed his face. “We had you with us the entire time,” he repeated, exhausted. “And although we’ve finally found you and gotten your agreement to help us—I think—our ship’s been shot down and the Odium’s on the way to Geyser and . . .”

  “Hang on there one minnit, feller,” Höwerglaz said, finger raised, “You misunderstand me. I dinnit say nothin’ about helpin’. Ain’t never been accused of bein’ that hospitable. I said I’m considerin’. There’s a difference.”

  “But Geyser—”

  “Is just a spot on the map. To me, nothin’ more. Ya call it home? Whoopie. Don’t mean it’s gotta concern me none. Like I said: Ya let me see ya’s interestin’, worth mah time, I’ll consider helpin’. That’s what I been doin’ this past day an’ some: seein’.”

  “We wasted so much time,” Aksel said.

  “Pfft, naw.” Höwerglaz waved him off. “It’ll work out.”

  The wind moved the hair hanging in Nevele’s face. “And you know this for certain?” Her voice was hoarse. She still held a portion of her forehead until the stitches could secure it back in place.

  Höwerglaz laughed. “Sorry, no, not really. Well, maybe. No, just kidding. I don’t. Well . . .” He eyed them a moment, cheeks puffing, and subjected them to another gap-toothed he-he.

  Clyde sighed. “Will you at least help us get home?” He pointed at the dismantled starship nearby. “Put one of these back together for us?”

  “Sure. How about this one? I liked this one.” He started back up the hill, trailing ribbons of his parachute. He approached the Praise to Her, which smoldered at its summit. “Intriguin’, tell ya what: a feller willin’ to bury bad men that don’t deserve to be nothin’ but carrion, helpin’ young pups cross the desert even though they meant to kill ya, comin’ after the likes of me in the hopes of recruitin’ me, not even knowin’ whether I was real or not while back home yer city’s ’bout that daggone close to bein’ smashed to bits. And even prevent your lady friend here from killin’ a man who’d sooner eat your heart with a spoon—while you watch—than say good mornin’.” His beard waggled over his shoulder like a windsock. “Truly a complex one, Clyde Pyne. Interestin’.”

  “Does that mean you’ll help us?”

  Höwerglaz stopped short of the starship wreck. “I suppose.”

  He held a lemniscate-tattooed hand toward the Praise to Her, a lazy motion.

  With a blink, the ship was new, pristine as the day she rolled off the assembly line, nary a dent—while Höwerglaz, in turn, became a young man.

  The sprightly clean-shaven teenager, possibly Emer’s older brother, Höwerglaz rolled aside the port hatch, that new starship smell wafting out. Before either could step aboard, Höwerglaz swept Aksel and Clyde aside with his arm and waved Nevele forward. “Ladies first.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Brotherly Love

  With Raziel breathing down his neck, Flam kept his radio turned up loud, chatter coming in fits and starts.

  Adeshka’s military pilots had engaged the Odium a few miles into the ice caps, and the fight had slowly moved south over the mountains dividing the Great Woods from the Lakebed’s northern fringes. A few Odium ships had slipped past, but it was suspected they were the ones accompanying the missile. The Adeshkan vessels’ electronic sniffers had picked up something that bore the signature of charged plasma, but they couldn’t pinpoint which ship.

  The Odium had shot down their pursuers with startling ease. Adeshka, in turn, was forced to dip into their military reserves and deploy a second salvo of fighter ships, which would take time.

  All that was fine and good, except that particular ship, the one with the missile, they’d lost track of. Those three little words stirred more fear in Flam than any before. Leading Raziel and Moira through town, when they passed the citizens’ elevator, he could confirm with one glance he hadn’t been alone in hearing that report. People were fleeing by the dozens now, pushing onto the elevator, no longer patiently taking turns.

  Flam was about to shout for them to be orderly about it for their own safety, when Raziel stepped near his side. “Not your concern right now. Lead on, Muffie.”

  Suffering the pejorative silently, Flam did as told.

  He guided the Pynes past the geyser’s jutting tip and fountains to the other line of buildings across. Sometimes Flam forgot how beautiful the city was, such a mixture of the new and old. Shapely, asymmetrical architecture courtesy of the Cynoscions’ crooked eye. The squared-off brick and mortar of humans’ work. The rough, squat domes of Mouflon design. Seemed everyone had put their stamp on Geyser.

  “Somewhere high,” Raziel said. “With a clear view.”

  “This way.” They ascended marble steps. At the stately front doors, heavy wood with wrought-iron bracings, Raziel tapped his toe as Flam used his guardsman skeleton key.

  Inside, they were met by the unmistakable smell of books. Geyser was proud of its library, boasting tomes printed not only in Geyser but some from sol systems as distant as PBW-441. Near the entrance, the library had a display especially for local authors. One title in particular jumped out at Flam as they passed the glass case: The Royal Stitcher’s Guide to Patches and Other Small Garment Fixes. If only he could use it to contact its writer to tell her to keep her fiancé away.

  Flam led Raziel and Moira through the main stacks to the stairs leading to the second floor, the nonfiction and reference sections. Farther on, using his skeleton key again, he led them into the attic: a repository of folding chairs, pianos, and easels. Leaving footprints in the dust, they passed through a small hatch and onto the roof.

  Jagged Bay lay ahead in magnificent view, with clear sight of the southernmost lip of the mainland, Scoona Port straight north and Talon Peninsula to the west. The skies were clear, no starships besides their two ringing the island like stir-crazy junkyard dogs. The silvery flying fish, the Gareista, leaped about with a ballerina’s grace, while Nigel’s slapdash junker swooped and patrolled with a more determined, focused trajectory.

  “My man Karl won’t hesitate to shoot him down if he gets in the way,” Raziel said.

  “It’s fine,” Flam replied. “Nigel’s a sound pilot.” He had no real way of knowing that, but the man had been in the Fifty-Eighth, so he probably knew how to fly somewhat.

  Moira and Raziel began readying rifles. Customized to excess, the weapons implied style over function, making Flam consider Raziel liked guns, the idea of the bottled carnage they possessed, but knew precious little about using them.
r />   Between the invisibility suits bearing the mark for the Srebrna Academy—when he could see it—and the artillery, Flam didn’t really know what to make of them. He wondered if their inclination toward destruction was born when Gorett stole the throne and, in their minds, Clyde stole it after him, or if a dormant wrathfulness had always occupied their hearts, twiddling its thumbs.

  Raziel squinted behind his rifle scope, calibrating it to zero in on the Aurorinean church spire across town.

  “He spent months looking for you,” Flam told them.

  Moira, who’d been feeding bullets into her own rifle, paused.

  Raziel cradled his weapon as if it were a steel infant. “You’re to help us, not concern yourself with my family. Remember you gave your word, Muffie.”

  Moira gave Flam a look of worry as her brother spoke, but she quickly returned her focus to her work.

  “And what about you? Is this what you want?” Flam asked her.

  Raziel, baring teeth, stepped in to block Flam’s view of her. “Do I need to repeat myself? It doesn’t matter what she thinks—about anything. We’re helping you save the city, and you’re paying for our aid with your life. That should be all that’s of concern to you.”

  As soon as it was clear Flam had gotten his point, Raziel returned to his preparations, stepping near the roof’s edge to take aim below. People, autos with families in them, the old man guarding his bakery armed with a coal shovel. Behind the scope, Raziel smiled. The Executioner’s twin axes wouldn’t have looked out of character piercing his lapel, Flam decided.

  Flam peeked over at Moira, hoping she’d read his thoughts right then. Help me stop him.

  When Raziel caught Moira returning the glance, looking pained, apologetic, she suddenly found her feet very interesting.

  “Oh? Did I interrupt something?”

  “No.”

  “Because it looked to me like you were making eyes with the Muffie.” Raziel turned to Flam. “Trying to pass notes without me knowing?” Eyes on Flam, he bent to whisper in Moira’s ear. “He’s not of our caste. He’s beneath us. He’s not even a he; he’s an it. Mouflons, for eons, were no more than beasts of burden, boulder pullers. They’re free now only because we have robots to do that sort of thing. Would you really want to sully our royal blood with a packhorse?”