The Finisher

by David Baldacci

  Duf sat a bit forward. “But Wugs just give me the beasts to train up.”

  “So now you can sell ’em the beast along with the training. Bet it’ll be worth more coin to Wugs if you supply a handpicked beast too.”

  “We don’t know nothin’ ’bout no bizness,” protested Delph.

  “You know beasts, don’t you?” I pointed out. “That’s what’s important.”

  Duf’s eyes twinkled. “She makes a right good point, Delph.”

  Delph still looked confused. “Then you got to share in the coin we make.”

  “Oh, you bet I will,” I lied.

  I must have said this too quickly, because Delph eyed me funny. I gave the bag of coins to Duf, rose and said my good-byes. As I walked off, Delph caught up to me.

  “What was all that chuff back there?” he asked.

  “Duf and you can really make a go of it. You just needed a bit of coin.”

  “Okay, but we need to talk about this.”

  “We will. Next light. Now I just need some rest.”

  I would never have that conversation with Delph.

  Because I was going to leave Wormwood and enter the Quag. And I was going to do so this very night. I walked on.

  STACKS LOOMED AHEAD of me like a castle without a moat outside or a king or queen inside. While I knew other Wugs were managing a pub crawl with only the one pub, I had decided to come to my place of work for the last time. It was not for nostalgic purposes.

  I opened the large door and peered inside. With the two jabbits dead, I wasn’t afraid to go inside, certainly not while it was still light. I knew now that Ladon-Tosh had guarded this place both light and night, just in different forms.

  Domitar sat in his little office at his tilt-top desk. There was no scroll or ink bottle there. But there was another bottle present: flame water.

  “I was hoping you might come by” was his surprising greeting as he waved me in. He poured a glass of flame water and took a sip. “Trounced the blackguard.”

  “You saw the jabbits?”

  He smacked his lips. “They were a wee bit hard to miss.”

  I could tell from his expression that he knew what my next question would be.

  “How did you know?” I asked.

  He feigned surprise, though I could tell he didn’t mean it.

  I said, “You said I’d done it before. Beaten Ladon-Tosh. But you really meant I’d beaten the jabbits before.”

  “Did I?”

  I ignored this. “That could mean one of two things.”

  He set the glass down. “I’m listening,” he said amiably.

  “One, you knew of my coming to Stacks at night. And of my being chased by the pair of jabbits to the little room on the second floor.”

  “Dear me, dear me,” said Domitar.

  I kept going. “Though I really didn’t beat them. I simply escaped from them.”

  “Same as in my book, but please continue,” he said when I paused.

  “Or you saw me destroy a flying jabbit on a great battlefield many sessions ago.”

  I had expected him to look startled by this second possibility, but Domitar remained unshaken. “I will admit to the first, but not the second.” He tapped his glass against his chin. “Quite a mess you made here too,” he said. “Many pieces to pick up. Not really my job, but there you are.”

  I felt myself growing warm. “So you knew about the jabbits in here?”

  He finished the flame water in his glass. “Don’t know why I drink the stuff,” he said. “Becomes a habit, I suppose. So much of life does, doesn’t it?”

  “The jabbits!” I cried out.

  “All right, all right, but no Wug is supposed to come in here at night, are they?”

  “Is that your answer?”

  “Do I need another?”

  “You bloody well do. I almost was eaten by those vile creatures.”

  “Let that be a lesson to you, then.”

  “Domitar, they were jabbits.”

  “Yes, yes, I quite get the point, thank you. Hideous things.” He shivered.

  “And what of the room with the blood? And going back into the past? And books that explode in your face? And the looking glasses with demons?”

  He looked at me blankly. “I think perhaps the Duelum has affected your mind, Vega Jane. Do you need a lie-down?”

  “So you’re saying you don’t know about those things here? You said this had always been Stacks.”

  “I said this had been Stacks since I came here,” he corrected.

  I folded my arms over my chest and continued to stare at him.

  “What does Stacks look like to you?” he asked.

  “Magic, sorcery, devilry, call it what you will, it’s strange.”

  “I mean what does it look like from the outside?”

  I thought about this. “Like a castle I saw once in a book at Learning. But that was fantasy, not real.”

  “Who says so?” he asked pedantically.

  “Well, I mean.” I drew a long breath. “It’s all rubbish, I know.”

  “Well done.”

  “So whose castle was it?”

  “I am not the one to answer that because I don’t know.”

  “If you know it was a castle once, how can you not know whose castle it was?” I demanded.

  “One can possess some shallow perspective without the depth of true knowledge.”

  I fumed over this for a sliver. “All right. So has the Quag always been the Quag?”

  He refilled his glass, sloshing the flame water onto the surface of his desk. He took a quick drink, dribbling a bit down his chin. “The Quag? The Quag, you say? I know nothing of the Quag for the simple fact that I have never been in the Quag, I will never be in the Quag, and I thank the holy Steeples for that.”

  “So in Wormwood, you are destined to stay and die?”

  “As we all are.”

  “Not Quentin Herms.”

  “No, the Outliers got him.”

  “Now who is talking rubbish?”

  He set his glass down. “Do you have proof otherwise?” he asked sternly.

  “I aim to get it.”

  “Vega, if you’re planning to do what I think you’re —”

  “I think that she is, Domitar. I most assuredly do.”

  I whirled around at this voice. Little Dis Fidus stood in the doorway, a rag and a small bottle of liquid in hand.

  “Hello,” I said, not understanding what he had meant by his words. How could little, old Dis Fidus know anything of my plans?

  He shuffled forward. “I am happy for your victory in the Duelum this light.”

  “Thank you, but what did you mean —”

  However, he had shifted his gaze to Domitar. “We knew this moment would come of course. We needn’t a Selene Jones prophecy to know that.”

  I looked at Domitar as he slowly nodded. “The time has come, I suppose.”

  Dis Fidus held the rag to the bottle and doused the cloth with the liquid. “Hold out your hand, Vega,” he said.

  “Why? What’s that stuff on the cloth?”

  “Just hold out your hand. Your inked hand.”

  I glanced at Domitar, who slowly nodded at me.

  I tentatively held out my hand. My gaze was drawn to the blue skin on top, the result of two sessions of having Dis Fidus stamp my hand for no reason.

  Dis Fidus said, “This will not occur without some discomfort. I’m sorry. It is unavoidable.” I drew back my hand and looked at Domitar, who would not meet my gaze.

  “Why should I endure the pain?” I asked. “What result will come of it?”

  “It will be much less painful than what’s in the Quag if you have the ink on you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Nor should you,” said Domitar. “But if that is your plan, it is essential that the ink comes off.” He shut his mouth and turned to the wall.

  I looked back at Dis Fidus. I held out my hand once more, half closed my eye
s and prepared for the pain. He touched the top of my hand with the rag and I felt like a thousand flying stingers had attacked the surface. I tried to jerk my hand back but I couldn’t. When I fully opened my eyes, I saw that Dis Fidus had gripped my wrist with his hand. He was surprisingly strong for being so small and old.

  I moaned, clenched my teeth, bit my lip, screwed my eyes shut and swayed on my feet. When it got to the point where I could stand it no longer, Dis Fidus said, “’Tis done.”

  He let go of my wrist and I opened my eyes. The back of my hand was scarred and pink and sore. But there was not a trace of blue on it. I looked up at him as I rubbed it with my other hand. “Why did that need to be done?”

  “You have of course wondered why I spend my lights inking hands here,” said Dis Fidus. I nodded. “Well, now you have the answer. Simply put, to go through the Quag with an inked hand is a death sentence.”

  “So Quentin Herms, then?” I said bitterly.

  I looked from Domitar to Dis Fidus. Each shook their heads. Finally, Dis Fidus said, “If he went through the Quag with his hand as ’twas, I fear for him.”

  “So you don’t believe that Outliers took him, then?” I said, a sense of triumph in my words.

  Dis Fidus’s look told me that was unnecessary. “Surely, you have moved on from that theory,” he said in a voice I had never heard from him before. Gone was timid, bowing Dis Fidus. He still looked old and feeble, but there was a fire in his eyes I had never seen before.

  “I have,” I answered.

  “Then let us waste no more time speaking of it,” said Dis Fidus with finality. He corked the bottle and handed it and a fresh cloth to me. “Take this.”

  “But my hand is clean of ink.”

  “Take it nonetheless,” he urged.

  I put them away in my cloak. “So what is the ink, then? How is it harmful to us?”

  “In the Quag, it is like honey to stingers,” answered Domitar. “Or the scent given off by a female slep in need of a male.”

  “So it draws the beasts right to the Wugs,” I said fiercely. “A death sentence clearly,” I added accusingly. “And you knew about it!”

  “Wugs are not supposed to go into the Quag,” said Domitar defensively. “And if they don’t, the ink marks are meaningless to them.”

  “But what if the beasts come out of the Quag?” I said. “A garm came after me, chased me up my tree. And now I know why, because of the marks on my hand.”

  Domitar looked guiltily at Dis Fidus before continuing. “No system is perfect.”

  “And whose system was it?” I asked.

  Surprisingly, Dis Fidus answered. “It has always been so, that I know. And there is no Wug alive whose sessions tally to mine.”

  “What of Morrigone? Or Thansius?”

  “Even Thansius is not so old as Dis Fidus. Now, Morrigone is a special case, you understand,” said Domitar.

  “Oh, she’s special all right!” I exclaimed.

  “She’s not an evil Wug, strike that right from your mind right this sliver,” said Dis Fidus with startling energy.

  “I’ll think she’s evil if I want to, thank you very much,” I retorted.

  “Well, you would be wrong, then,” said Domitar wearily as he sipped from his glass. “Wugs and Wormwood are not so easily categorized.”

  I exclaimed, “What are we, then?”

  Domitar answered. “In one sense we’re Wugs, plain and simple. What we might have been before, well, it’s for our ancestors to say, isn’t it?”

  “They’re dead!” I shot back.

  “Well, there you are,” said Domitar imperturbably.

  “You talk in a circle!” I exclaimed. “You tell me Morrigone isn’t evil and expect me to believe that. She was controlling Ladon-Tosh. She was the reason those jabbits were inside him. She couldn’t control them. She had to beg me for help in slaying them.”

  To my astonishment, this did not seem to surprise either of them.

  Dis Fidus merely nodded, as though I were simply confirming what he already suspected.

  “Yes, it would be difficult for her,” said Dis Fidus in a nonchalant tone.

  “For her?” I shouted. “What about me?”

  “Some Wugs have duties passed down,” explained Domitar. “Morrigone is one of them. Before her, it was her mother’s responsibility to see to Wug welfare. And that is what she was doing this light.”

  “By trying to murder me?”

  “You are a danger to her and to all of Wormwood, Vega, do you not understand that?” said Domitar in exasperation.

  “How am I a danger to her? She pretended to be my friend. She let me think Krone was my true enemy. And she was trying to kill me in the Duelum. Why?”

  “That is something you must discover for yourself.”

  “Domitar!”

  “No, Vega. That is my last word on the subject.”

  I looked at them both. “So where does that leave us?”

  Domitar rose and corked his flame water. “Me still safely in Wormwood and you apparently not.”

  “You don’t think I’ll make it past the Quag, do you?”

  “Actually, I believe that you will,” he said in a whisper, and bowed his head. “And then may Steeples help all Wugs.”

  When I looked at Dis Fidus, he had bowed his head too.

  I turned and left Stacks. I would not be coming back.

  I WENT BACK TO my digs and packed up everything I owned — which wasn’t much — and placed it in my tuck. In the pocket of my cloak went the Adder Stone and the shrunken Elemental. I placed my tuck under my cot and decided to spend one of the coins I had in my cloak pocket on a last meal in my place of birth.

  The Starving Tove was where Delph and I had eaten twice before. As I walked toward it on the High Street with Harry Two at my heels, I could hear the cries of celebration still swirling from the Witch-Pidgy. Wugs had spilled out onto the cobblestones to pull on their pints and whittle down bits of meats, breads and potatoes.

  Roman Picus seemed quite on the other side of the sail, as did Thaddeus Kitchen and Litches McGee. The three of them staggered about like Wugs on ice singing at the top of their lungs. I next saw Cacus Loon leaning against a post. His face was as red with flame water as the bottom of Hestia Loon’s frying pan coming off the coals.

  I ducked around to the Tove before any of them could get a gander at me. I wanted food. I did not desire company. The Tove held no Wugs except the ones working there because of the free food at the pub. I held out my coin, as a matter of course, to let them know I could pay for my meal, but the big, flat-faced Wug who seated me waved this off.

  “Your coin is no good here, Vega.”

  “What?”

  “On us, Vega. And what an honor i’tis.”

  “Are you sure you can do that?” I asked.

  “Sure as you beat that wicked Ladon-Tosh to nothing.”

  When he brought me the scroll with the food items on it, I said I would have one of everything. At first, he looked surprised by this, but then a silly grin spread across his face and he replied, “Coming right up, luv.”

  I ate like I never had in all my sessions. It was as though I had never had a meal before. The more I ate, the more I wanted, until I could gorge no more. I knew I would probably never have a meal like this one again. I pushed back the last plate, patted my belly contentedly and then refocused on what was coming. I glanced out the window. The first section of night was here.

  I would wait until the fourth section. That seemed as good a time as any to tackle the Quag. I figured going into the darkness during the darkness was a good plan. There was danger to be faced, and confronting it head-on and as soon as possible seemed more sensible to my mind than trying to forever avoid it. I needed to know if I had the mettle to make it or not. Why dither about?

  I also doubted quite seriously if one could wholly navigate the Quag during the brightness. I just knew that one had to go through the blackness of the shadows to get to the gold of
the light. That sorry thought was about as poetic as I was ever going to be.

  I had brought some food out with me to give to Harry Two. This was my other concern. Food. We had to eat while we were in the Quag. I looked down at the few remaining coins I had. I went to another shop and spent it all on some basic provisions for my canine and me. It wasn’t much, and part of me was glad of that. I couldn’t be bogged down with pounds of food if I was running from a garm. I had no idea how long it would take to get through the Quag.

  The food I had purchased clearly would not last us that long. And I would have to bring water too. But water was also heavy and I could not carry enough of it to last half a session. The truth was I had to be able to locate food and water in the Quag. I was somewhat heartened by the fact that beasts, no matter how vile, also needed to eat and have water to drink. I just didn’t want their food to be us.

  It was now the second section of night and I had just reached my digs when I looked up and saw it coming.

  Adars are clumsy-looking beasts when ground-bound. In the air, though, they are creatures of grace and beauty. This one soared along, flying far better than I ever would.

  It drew closer and closer and finally descended and came to rest a few feet from me. As I looked more closely at it, I realized it was the adar Duf had been training up for Thansius. And then I also observed it had a woolen bag in its beak. It ambled toward me and dropped the bag at my feet.

  I looked down at it and then up at the tall adar.

  “A present from Thansius,” said the adar in a voice that was remarkably like the Wug himself.

  I knelt, picked up the cloth bag and opened it. There were two items inside.

  My grandfather’s ring.

  And the book on the Quag.

  I looked at the adar. I had to close my eyes and reopen them. For a moment I could have sworn I was staring into the face of Thansius.

  The adar continued. “He says take them with faith and the belief that the courage of one can change everything.”

  I slipped the ring and book inside my cloak. I thought I was done with the adar, or he with me, but that was not the case. His next words froze me, but only for an instant. Then I was running full tilt to the door of my digs, where I frantically retrieved my tuck. I burst out of my door and ran down the cobblestones with Harry Two bounding next to me.