by J. M. Martin
For her own curiosity, she pried open the faceplate with the tip of her blade, and found another gnome inside. Like his kin, that same cold, pale skin, and luminous green eyes that stared up at her, past her, at the twinkling sky.
Were these the gnomes who’d supported Vilka in the centuries-old fight for the gnomish throne? Had she blessed them with unusually long life, too? Jancy curled her lip at the gnome’s pasty, dead skin. “Some price to pay…”
The wailing baby ripped her attention upward, and soon Jancy was scaling the wall of Vilka’s tower.
#
This is it. This is the window.
Jancy had followed her ears to the right spot, or so she thought. Wouldn’t know for sure until she pulled herself over the jutting, angled ledge to see what awaited her. And would that be Vilka? Yes, certainly. The shadow stick, lost. The scryer, dead. The fight in the yard. The sorceress could not have felt Jancy’s presence.
So be it.
Jancy took one glance over her shoulder—the breathtaking view from this dizzying height as she clung to the sill’s underside like a spider, fingers and thin leather climbing boots locked into the tiniest of crevices, arms and legs bent at rigid angles to keep her from plunging down, down—and took a deep breath of night air.
And then she pulled herself up and over the ledge to land lightly on a plush, animal skin rug. Light oozed from brass wall sconces holding clear domes of glass. A smell like old garments and machine oil tickled Jancy’s nose. The room was wide, spanning the tower’s full diameter. A set of stairs spiraled up along the wall, another set spiraled down.
Jancy was hardly an expert in valuable antiquities, but even her untrained eye could fathom the pricelessness of the artifacts displayed on the walls, bureaus, and tables all around the room. In a far niche stood a cluster of exotic, pale dolls, clockwork beauties with skin made of porcelain and brass plates, nearly seamless rivet work and clear, vibrant eyes that looked down or away; some right at her.
“Waaaaaa!”
Heart racing, senses piqued to screaming, Jancy darted to an ornate bed in the center of the room, slid across the golden quilt, and landed softly beside a gently rocking cradle. The child’s prison swayed of its own volition, the click, click, click of mechanisms inside as the machine wheel turned and the rocker arm gently labored.
Jancy stood over it, looking down. She pursed her lips in disappointment. The baby wailed again and Jancy nodded to herself—dumb, dumb, dumb, Jancy. You are so dumb. A fool, even, for coming here.
She shook her head and reached inside to touch it, see if it was real. Its skin was cold and unyielding, tarnished, marred with faint, circular scratches from what must have been centuries of polishing. Eyes made of azure-tinted crystal shifted around, looking at nothing. Brass eyelids blinked with soft claps. Its hinged mouth flopped open, and that discordant cry came again. “Waaaa!”
“Damn it.” You should have known not to trust a bard’s tale. Only half right, it was. He said he’d heard a child, but you never thought to ask him if he’d actually seen it. And you’re a fool for not noticing it sooner, so blind…
“I’m trying to discern what you are.” The voice reached her from another part of the room; a child’s voice bathed in callousness.
Jancy froze.
“A human? An elf? No, I think neither of those.”
Unhuman. Jancy pulled her hands out of the cradle and turned.
The owner of the voice separated herself from the other dolls with slow, easy steps for one so small. She came to just above Jancy’s waist but seemed taller. Must be her elegant posture; back straight, shoulders up and stiff, weight balanced perfectly on her hips.
“You’re Vilka.”
“I am.” No hesitation. “But that still doesn’t answer my question. What are you?” The sorceress lingered in the shadows at the edge of the light, playing.
“Don’t you want to know my name?”
Vilka made a dismissive noise. “It hardly matters.” She crossed to Jancy’s right, passing behind a sitting chair, her pallid hands tracing gently across its back. The sorceress moved in and out of the shadows, exposing her features a little at a time. She wore a simple black gown, slippers on her feet, and bracelets that jangled as she moved. Hair the color of ink fell in tiny ringlets around her brow and down over her shoulders. A sharp jaw was set in something like anger, softened by glowing skin. A startlingly blue eye flashed in the light and then dimmed as the sorcerous found another pocket of darkness.
It was unnerving the way she moved, especially since Jancy had thought herself something of an enigma in that category. “What happened to the baby?”
“The baby? Oh, you mean my son, Nurthrik? He’s been gone a very long time, both from this tower and from the face of Sullenor, too. Dead, I’m afraid. But he lived a very long life.”
Jancy shook her head in confusion. “I don’t understand. Hopper…” Damn! She hadn’t meant to expose the bard. Well, no use in protecting him now. That squirrel was on the spit. “Hopper told me you took the child from the throne room in Thrasperville. That you stole him.”
Vilka’s chuckle was a wicked stab. The sorceress turned and crossed back the other way, toward the window, showing Jancy, quite plainly, the other side of her face. Jancy gasped, stepped back, stomach turning with revulsion. Vilka’s face was…it was…skinless…no, plated. No, an assembly. Delicate rivets ran across her forehead, encircled her ear, and plunged beneath her chin. Her jaw was hinged with a finely-grooved bolt. A blue stone blazed from her lidless eye socket. Brass teeth clicked when she spoke, and her voice no longer feigned at kindness or even curiosity. It was cruel. “Is that what he said?”
“Yes, and he said you killed so many good gnomes. That you slaughtered them for no other reason than ambition.”
“Well, yes. I did the stealing of the child, and the slaughtering. Well, some of it, anyway. But, as usual, the scribes and bards only have one side of the tale. The side that is the most compelling and cruel and pointedly not in my favor, no doubt.” Vilka was standing not fifteen feet from Jancy, staring out the window. She sighed, cocked her head. “You do know there’s always two…sides.”
“Yes, of course.” Jancy sought her itch, longed for it. But it was gone. She was frozen to the spot, unable to move. Barely able to breath. She gulped. “What’s your side, then?”
“The truth!” Vilka’s chin jutted in defiance. “Hopper painted the Thrasperville colony as the perfect picture of victory over great odds, yes? Pure of purpose?”
Jancy nodded.
“The last of our kind?”
Again, Jancy nodded.
“Hah! No, Thrasperville was founded by criminals and miscreants, necromongers and polymagicians, who fled across the sea to this insipid rock you call Sullenor. We were prisoners of the cogweavers in the old world. Entire generations of us, slaves. Entrapped so long no one remembered why we’d been imprisoned in the first place. So we broke free, killed hundreds of them, stole what we could, and trudged across the sea.
“Who knew that when we came here, we’d turn against one another?” Vilka shrugged. “Looking back, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise, I suppose. We all had our egos, and our pride. We all wanted to rule in the new world with the others at our feet. What happened in the throne room at Thrasperville was nothing short of chaos. Bloodshed. Brother against sister. Father against son.
“My stealing that child got their attention. It bound them together. It gave them a common cause. You see, I saved that city. They came after me rather than destroy themselves.”
“They couldn’t defeat you.”
“No, they couldn’t. And my dear son, Nurthrik, grew up to be quite normal. A great cogweaver in his own right. A decent wizard, even. In fact, he got very bored of this tower and sought his fortune elsewhere, out there in the world.” She waved her hand absently at the window. “Met some of our Thrasperville kin who were not happy with the current Mayor, or whatever they called it at the time, and st
ruck out eastward to begin a new city. They called it Hightower, I believe.”
Jancy’s nerves began to calm as she sensed the truth in Vilka’s story. Jancy knew the hearts of men, had witnessed their cruelty and malice firsthand, and she figured they weren’t too far removed from the hearts of gnomes. She could picture the slaughter in the throne room; a combination of her and Hopper’s tales, the truth lying somewhere in between the tellings. It didn’t matter, though, because there was no child in danger. There was no child. Jancy had no reason to be here, no reason to trouble this gnomestress, strange as she may be, any longer.
“Why do you keep this?” Jancy nodded to the hulk of metal in the cradle.
A flash of sadness passed over the Vilka’s face, a quick sprinkle of sorrow, and “because it reminds me of him. My son.”
Someone else’s son. But Jancy didn’t press the point. “I’m sorry for coming here. I shouldn’t have. I didn’t know—”
“Yes, assumptions. They always get us into trouble, don’t they? I find it ironic that a baby stealer came here to accuse me of the selfsame thing.”
“I don’t steal them.”
“Oh? What would you call it, then? Did you come all this way because you thought it was hungry?”
“No!” Jancy bit her tongue. That itch wiggled inside her belly, that tease of premonition she always got when something was about to go horribly wrong. “I’ll just be going, if you don’t mind.” Jancy started to slide across the bed, since Vilka was directly in her path if she wanted to go around it, but the sorceress stepped quickly and quietly toward the window, blocking the way out. Her gaze remained outside, though, leaving that awful side of her face for Jancy to consider.
“You won’t take the stairs? Don’t you trust me?”
Jancy stopped, put her feet back on the ground. “I don’t even know you.”
“That’s right,” Vilka’s voice dripped venom. “And you broke into my home.”
Jancy shifted nervously from one foot to the other. She’d already taken stock of every possible escape route, but the only sure exit was out the window, through the sorceress. “I…I apologize for that. My intentions were—.”
Vilka faced Jancy, smiled, half honey, half horror. “Apology not accepted. You see, if I let everyone simply stroll in here, have a cup of tea, and then leave, I fear my reputation would suffer. I might even seem somehow vulnerable to those wobbleheads up in Thrasperville who, for the most part, have forgotten all about me.”
Jancy’s body became taut for a nervous moment and then relaxed into state of calm resignation. It would be a fight. She could feel it.
“Plus I have a collection to keep up.” The sorceress gestured to a large tank behind Jancy, a massive block of glass so opaque that not even Jancy’s superior eyes could pierce it. Now, though, it was crystalizing, clearing, so that she could see what was stored there…
Jancy gasped, unbelieving.
Heads.
In ornate glass jars.
Bloated things in some murky brine. Humans and elves, dwarves with their beards spun around at the bottoms, trolls in the bigger ones. But mostly gnomes. Old ones, to be sure; flesh sloughed and floating in that putrid slosh. Jancy felt their eyes on her. Accusing! They all knew what she’d been doing these past few years. Fixing those poor fathers and wretched mothers, killing, no, murdering anyone that didn’t fit her sense of right and good. Whispers in Half Town’s taverns spoke of a misguided vigilante. She knew then that hers would be the next head in a jar. And probably Hopper’s soon after.
She returned Vilka’s wicked stare, blue eyes against green, her fingers brushing the hilts of her knives.
And then Jancy got the itch to move…
Professional Integrity
Michael J. Sullivan
"Professional Integrity" is set in the world of my Riyria Revelations, which centers around two rogues, Royce Melborn (a cynical thief/assassin) and Hadrian Blackwater (a more idealistic ex-mercenary). No prior knowledge of the Riyria books is required to enjoy this story to its fullest. This team makes a living taking “jobs” for various nobles. Usually that means stealing something, but when a young heiress asks them to steal her…well that’s a first for the pair. The name of the person being Tuckerized in this short couldn’t have been a better choice. While I’m playing it coy as to avoid spoilers, I think you’ll come to understand why it fits this particular story so well.
~
“Say that again,” Hadrian said.
“I want you to kidnap me.” Red-headed, freckled, with deep green eyes as fresh as the leaves of trees after a hard rain, the young woman sat, or more accurately perched, on a stool. Holding a purse on her lap, she was all smiles.
Royce, who had been watching the passing carriages, chose that moment to shut the tea shop’s door. He also closed the adjoining room’s partition, sealing the three of them in a world of doilies, crumb cakes, tiny cups, and parasol stands.
“We’re thieves,” Royce told her in a quiet voice. “We don’t kidnap.”
“It’s the same thing, really,” the young woman insisted, maintaining her blinding grin.
“Really—it isn’t,” Royce said.
“No, seriously. You’re just stealing, you know…a person—me.”
“Fine,” Royce said. “Consider yourself stolen.”
“No, not now. You have to kidnap me tomorrow night.”
“Why?” Hadrian asked, leaning forward carefully.
He sat across from the young woman—who’d said her name was Kristin Lamb—at a little table with an untouched teapot and three cups. He was certain a good bump would send the whole thing over. The entire room was like that, filled with glass and porcelain.
“Because that’s when he’s coming, and he needs to think I’ve been abducted.”
“Who’s he?”
The woman’s bright grin stretched to a full-on beam. Kristin looked up and then closed her eyes, lost in a moment of memory or dream. “Just the most wonderful man on the face of Elan—the Viscount Ianto Don Speakman.”
“And why do you want him to think you’ve been kidnapped?”
Kristin’s eyes popped open, and she shifted in her seat. “Is it really necessary for you to know?”
“No, it’s not, because we don’t kidnap heiresses,” Royce jumped in. He was hovering halfway between the table and the door to the street. “Now if you know a neighbor you don’t like who has a jeweled tiara she keeps in a dresser drawer, we can do business, otherwise—”
“Yes, it’s necessary,” Hadrian said, and turned to face her more directly, the scabbard of his bastard sword dragging across the rug.
“Well, you see, we’re going to be married.”
“Okay, so why do you want your fiancé to think you’ve been kidnapped?”
“Well…” Kristin’s fingers played self-consciously with the heart-shaped silver locket hanging from a chain around her neck, her face blushing. “He’s not exactly my fiancé.”
“How much not your fiancé is he?”
She looked away, her sunbeam smile growing cloudy. “He doesn’t know I exist.” Her white-gloved hands came up to cover embarrassment.
“Not going to make much of an impression on him if you disappear then, is it?” Royce took advantage of the woman’s covered face to glare at Hadrian and jerked his head toward the exit.
Royce wasn’t the sociable sort. Most of their jobs were set up through a liaison which avoided this shortcoming, but after their last arranged venture, which resulted in the two being trapped in the roots of a mountain by a long dead dwarven jester, Royce had insisted on handling this meeting personally.
“No, it will!” Kristin’s head popped out of her hands. “When he’s heard I’ve been taken, he’ll rush to my rescue. And tomorrow will be perfect. Ianto and Parson Engels come every month. They spend their nights drinking with my father until they all pass out.”
“Oh, yeah, definitely sounds like the most wonderful man in Elan.” Royce move
d behind Kristin and, with an earnest expression, pointed at the door.
“Oh he’s not a drunkard. He’s a man of honor and only partakes to please my father. He’s much too polite to say no.”
“Luckily we don’t suffer from the same malady. Hadrian? Shall we? No need to keep wasting this lady’s time and we really—”
“I’ll pay fifteen sovereign tenents.” Kristin pried the mouth of her purse open. The coins poured onto the delicate table with a clatter. One rolled off, hit the floor, and spiraled around before ramming into Royce’s foot. “See!”
Royce plucked the coin with a look of amazement. “You brought the money with you?”
“Ah-huh.” Kristin nodded, making her ponytail bounce. “I thought you might not believe me.”
“Oh, trust me, I don’t believe you.”
“What?” She patted a gloved hand on the pile she’d just poured. “This is real coin.”
“I know—I’m not referring to the money,” Royce said. “I honestly can’t believe you made it this far.”
“Oh.” She threw a dismissive hand at him and smirked. “Well, I only live a few miles outside of Medford.” Kristin pointed toward the window, which framed their view of the crowded plaza of Gentry Square where scores of nobles strolled in the midday sun. “I could have walked. Really I could have, but these are new shoes…” She stomped a dainty foot on the rug, making a muffled thump. “And Daddy is always saying the horses need exercise.”
“I meant in life,” Royce said. “I can’t believe you’ve lived this long. You’re what? Twenty-five? Twenty-six? By now I would have bet gold you’d have drowned by looking up in a rainstorm.”
Kristin’s eyes widened. “Don’t you dare insult me!” She squared her shoulders and straightened the sleeves of her gown. “You make it sound like I’m an old hag. I’m only twenty-two!”
Royce looked at Hadrian and rolled his eyes. Turning back to Kristin, he made a ridiculous bow. “Oh—well, my apologies.”