by D. P. Prior
This had potential.
He folded the bag up and crammed it into his pocket. It took up no more room than Albert’s handkerchief. He pulled it out again, unfolded it, and reached inside. Still there. He removed a globe as solid and real as he was. He held it for a moment, considering. What if he could fill this thing with bullets, globes, all manner of equipment he might need in his line of work? Did it have a maximum capacity, or could he just go on filling it? How would he retrieve everything, though? Surely he could only reach so much. There had to be more to it; some way it was meant to be used that he’d not yet discovered. Still, even if it could just hold the twenty globes and some extra ammunition, it would come in handy.
He quickly put the rest of the globes inside.
From the other plinths, he withdrew cartridges of bullets, canned food, and a pair of dark goggles with a pliant band for securing them to the head. When he looked through the lenses, colors sharpened, edges came into focus, and something whirred and clicked as he shifted his field of vision.
No matter how much he placed in the bag, it still remained empty. As he folded it and crammed it in his pocket, the thought struck him: no matter what he’d lost back in New Jerusalem, with a bag like this, the possibilities were endless. Especially if he got into smuggling.
When he reached the control room, he wasn’t sure whether to be surprised or angry that Albert was already strapped into one of the half-egg chairs, sipping on cognac. Ekyls was in the seat beside him, rigid with wide-eyed fear.
Albert raised his glass. “Left the bottle in your quarters,” he said. “Had to break the seal. Surprised you hadn’t started it.”
“You’ve been in my quarters?” Because if you have, two can play at that game.
Albert took a sip and swilled his glass. “I assumed you were joking earlier. Did I do wrong?”
A long pause settled between them, but finally Shadrak said, “Do it again, and you’re dead.”
“You’re too kind,” Albert said, tipping his head back and draining the glass.
Shadrak bent over the control plinth and swiped symbols across the screen. The plane ship had a memory of sorts; that much he’d worked out. You only needed to find the right images, and it’d retrace previous journeys.
“So, where are you taking us?” Albert said.
Shadrak glanced from him to Ekyls. The savage was sweating and shaking in his seat. If they didn’t get moving soon, the suspense would probably kill him. Either that, or the stench of shite from his britches would kill everyone else.
“Remember how last time you didn’t get to see a whole lot of Gandaw’s mountain?” Neither had Shadrak. He’d been wounded by the Thanatosian, and Albert had been charged with getting him back to New Jerusalem.
“Oh…” Albert said.
Ekyls cursed under his breath.
The door slid open, and Bird stepped inside, leading Nameless by the hand. The dwarf pivoted his great helm to look around, but he passed no comment. Bird snapped his fingers twice, and two more chairs rose from the floor. Shogger knew the plane ship better than Shadrak did. He strapped Nameless into a seat and lay the axe across his lap. Then he settled himself into the other.
Albert’s look to Shadrak said, “Who the hell is that?”
Shadrak scowled and made the introductions. “Albert, Bird. Bird, Albert.” In response to Albert’s upturned palms, he said, “Bird’s some weirdo Nameless picked up on the road. Don’t worry, you’ll be quite safe. It ain’t like he can change shape and summon swarms of insects or nothing.”
“What?” Albert said, glancing from Bird to Shadrak.
Ekyls let out a low growl and curled his hands into claws.
Nameless started to struggle against his straps. Bird reached over; tried to calm him with a touch on the shoulder.
“What’s this?” Nameless said. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t you remember?” Shadrak said. “Dinner time at the Perfect Peak.”
“Must’ve slipped my mind,” Nameless said. “But what’s with the straps? Did I do something wrong?”
“Ton of things,” Shadrak said. “None of them recent.”
He swiped the symbols toward the bottom of the screen, and the air grew heavy. The chamber distorted and then started to ghost out of view.
Ekyls let out a wild and howling scream.
Albert chuckled.
“Oh, my bristling—” Nameless started, but his words were cut off by a violent heave and a gurgling rush. He coughed and spat and cursed. “My helm! I’ve puked in my shogging helm!”
THE THREE TASKS
Nameless was still spluttering and coughing up his gorge when they arrived. The noise was a sodding distraction. More than that, it was cudgel up the arse.
Shadrak swiped a couple of symbols till the screen flickered and revealed what was outside. Darkness, mostly. A huge sea of it. The plane ship must have reappeared in the shadow of the Perfect Peak.
He turned at the sound of restraints snapping open. Albert was first out of his seat, which sank back down through the floor.
“That sand?” he said, squinting at the screen.
“Bone,” Shadrak said. Reduced to dust over the centuries; all that was left of whatever was there when Sektis Gandaw arrived. He ignored Albert’s raised eyebrow and left him to work it out for himself. Knowledge was power, after all; only shogwits and scuts gave it away.
Ekyls growled and thrashed against his restraints. He was red with strain as his growling turned into a shrill scream, and he began to hammer the seat with his fists. Shadrak would’ve left him to it till steam came out his ears and his head exploded. That would’ve been worth seeing, like when Cadman tried out that fang of Eingana and splatted Jarmin the Anchorite all over the walls of his cellar. The memory almost brought a smile to Shadrak’s face, but then Albert went and ruined it, going to Ekyls’ aid like a doting mother.
Bird freed himself from his seat before helping Nameless up.
The dwarf tipped his head back then flung it forward, sending a torrent of vomit through the eye-slit of his helm.
Shadrak stiffened. He shogging hated puke. He waited a second, in case the plane ship’s army of cleaners decided to start working again, but nothing happened. Another couple of seconds, and still nothing. He found himself staring at the brown streaks across the floor, not knowing whether to yell or scream. His fingers took on a life of their own, first bunching then splaying over the knives in his baldric.
“You got a mop in here?” Nameless said. “One thing I can’t stand is a puke-stained floor. Especially when it’s my own puke. Do you know, even my burps stink like the Demiurgos’s farts since I’ve been tube-fed. Still, can’t complain. It’s not half as bad as the flatulence I got from those raw egg protein drinks Rugbeard used to sell before he left Arx Gravis.” He dipped his head in silence for a moment, remembering.
Shadrak scoffed quietly to himself. Way he saw it, Rugbeard had been a drunken sot. Probably would’ve survived the sentroid’s death-ray if all the alcohol in his blood hadn’t ignited. Bollocks, all that misery over the dead, in any case. Job like his, you grew hard to it, till you didn’t give a shog. He caught the lie even as he thought it. If it were true, the Archon wouldn’t have such a hold over him. Kadee would be nothing more than a worm-eaten corpse, and he’d think no more on it.
“Oh, and I’ll need a bucket of water,” Nameless said. “To fill this shogging helm up and swill it around. I refuse to spend the rest of my life breathing in the aroma of dried vomit.”
“Here, let me,” Bird said. He placed a palm over the eye-slit. Two of his fingers oozed free of his hand and slithered inside the great helm. “They’ll eat what’s left.”
Shadrak swallowed down bile. He could’ve sworn it was Bird’s two fingers that had broken free, but when he looked again, they were all still there.
Bird caught him gawping and gave a tight smile.
“What do I do with them once they’ve finished?” Nameless said.
There was a tremor in his voice.
“I expect they’ll crawl in your ears and set to work on your brain,” Albert said. “Though, that won’t keep them sated for long.”
“Laddie,” Nameless said, “you’re not only a wit, but you’ve got guts joshing with me like that.”
Albert took a wary step back.
“A lot of guts,” Nameless said, jabbing Albert in the belly with the haft of his axe.
“Hilarious,” Albert said, and for a split-second, Shadrak saw that calculating look flit across his face. Probably, no one else noticed. Albert was too good for that. He turned on his most infectious smile and gave a good-natured laugh.
Nameless laughed along with him, a deep belly rumble that was suddenly cut off when the slug-things oozed back out of the eye-slit and plopped onto the floor like bloated sausages.
Ekyls hissed and raised his hatchet.
Albert whipped out his handkerchief and covered his mouth.
Bird, however, scooped them up and rolled them about in his hands until they vanished.
“Finished?” Shadrak said.
Bird nodded.
“Good, then let’s go.”
***
A small man was waiting for them outside. Small, but no shorter than Shadrak—or Bird for that matter. Shadrak turned his nose up at that. If he didn’t know better, he’d have said it was a shogging conspiracy; one that had started with that fat bastard Cadman calling him a homunculus. How many times had he heard it since? Heard it as an insult and barely stopped himself from gutting whichever scut had suggested it.
What struck him about the man wasn’t so much his glistening black hair, perfectly cropped and not a strand out of place; nor was it his pressed gray tunic and trousers, or the shoes that looked to be made out of the same stuff as his hair—because whatever it was, it wasn’t natural. It was the way he betrayed no surprise at them stepping out of thin air; the way he ran his beady eyes over the group like he was expecting them.
Albert lurked over Shadrak’s shoulder, breath thick with garlic and onions, and making Shadrak wish his sense of smell wasn’t so strong. Ekyls held back behind him, muscles so bunched it looked like he had no neck. Nameless was fussing with his helm, slapping it on the side to make sure Bird’s slug things hadn’t left anything inside.
Bird, though, glided across the bleached sand of the Dead Lands, cloak of feathers ruffled by the swirling winds. He clasped hands with the little man, and Shadrak didn’t miss the subtle pressing of Bird’s thumb to the other’s knuckle, the reciprocal tap of the little man’s pinky. Secret handshakes were second nature to a Sicarii, but neither of them struck him as an assassin.
“See that?” Albert whispered.
“Yeah, I saw it.” Shadrak fanned the air in front of his face.
Albert took the hint and stepped back, breathing into his cupped palm and sniffing.
Nameless trudged past, boots leaving deep imprints in the white dust. “Mephesch,” he said, with a nod at the little man. “We were expected?”
“Not exactly.” Mephesch looked toward the plane ship, as if he could see it clear as day. “The Perfect Peak got overexcited at the approach of the plane ship. Flashing lights, sirens, that sort of thing. His grandiosity was not best pleased. Right in the middle of calibrating a portal, he was, when the alarms went off. Stood up too quickly. Banged his head on the underside of the console. No hair to buffer it, either.”
“Oh dear,” Nameless said. “Shame. Wish I’d been there to see it. So, Mephesch, seems you already know Bird here. I brought some friends. Hope old baldilocks doesn’t mind. Well, I don’t give a shog actually. The dandy fellow in the suit’s Albert, and the angry savage is…” He looked to Shadrak for help.
“Ekyls.” Shadrak advanced on Mephesch. “And I’m—”
“I know,” Mephesch said. His eyes were shiny black pebbles, but specks of silver danced across their surface, like pinpricks of starlight. “But do you know?” He flicked a look at Bird, who shook his head then dropped his chin to his chest.
“Homunculi!” Nameless said, slapping Mephesch on the back so hard the little man stumbled and would have fallen, had Shadrak not caught him by the elbow. “Crafty bleeders, the lot of you. Last time I saw so many together was”—he cocked his thumb and turned it down toward the ground—“in Gehenna. Slippery shoggers, eh, Shadrak? Always telling you one thing then doing another.”
Did he know? Did he know what the Archon had told Shadrak to do?
Nameless clamped a hand on his shoulder, squeezed so hard Shadrak had to grit his teeth to stop himself stabbing him on instinct.
“Present company excepted,” Nameless said. “Come on, lads. Who’s for a tour of the inside of Sektis Gandaw’s mountain?”
Mephesch guided them to a dark circular dais that stood out from the sand. Flecks of green glinted on its surface. Scarolite, then. Enough to buy you mansion in New Jerusalem, if you were into such things.
Albert whistled.
“Step on, if you please,” Mephesch said.
Ekyls hissed and pulled back.
“Come on, Ekyls,” Albert said.
The savage shook his head and spat in the direction of the dais.
Albert folded his arms over his chest and frowned. “Bondsman, have you forgotten already?”
Ekyls’ eyes flashed with rage, but swiftly dulled when confronted with Albert’s expectant and unwavering stare.
What was it? What hold did Albert have over him?
Once Ekyls joined them on the scarolite circle, Mephesch tapped a vambrace on his left wrist, and the platform shuddered, then started to sink into the ground.
Shadrak bit down the queasiness in his stomach. He tugged his cloak about his shoulders and retreated into the darkness of his hood.
He’d only gotten as far as the roots of the Perfect Peak before, but he’d seen enough to recognize the technology. His heart began to hammer away with a will of its own. His shoulder throbbed, as if it remembered. Thanatosian, the Archon had called the creature that did it. Some kind of perfect killer from another world. He scoffed at that, more to relax himself than anything else. Hadn’t been that perfect. After all, he’d killed it, hadn’t he?
Nameless was humming a jaunty tune from within his great helm. Bird may as well have been out for a casual stroll. Ekyls, however, backed up against Albert, eyes wide, fingers gripping his hatchet so hard the knuckles looked like nubs of protruding bone.
After dropping through blackness for a minute or so, the disk steadied, and then floated horizontally. Blue light streaked past, as if they were speeding as fast as a bullet, but it felt to Shadrak like they were moving slowly underwater. There was a whirr and a click as the blue lights separated out into spaced dashes, and then they started to climb.
An aperture opened above them; the disk brought them through it and settled into the floor of an enormous chamber. Banks of screens, like those in the plane ship, only much bigger, wound their way up to the ceiling in ever-decreasing circles. They were all blank. Scarolite walls tapered to a point high above, forming the inside of an enormous cone. There were desks speckled with winking lights stationed in front of each screen. Chairs were tucked under each of the desks, but they were empty. Presumably, Sektis Gandaw had needed operators to man his center of operations, which now seemed as dead as he was.
Mephesch led them across the circular floor space to a hairline rectangle in the wall, which slid open as they drew near. The room beyond was a simple square of scarolite, with some unseen light source amplifying the glow of the green flecks in the stone. On the far side stood an arch made from blocks of scarolite roughly stacked on top of each other without any mortar. Aristodeus was on his back beneath it, staring up at the keystone through dark-tinted goggles. Teams of homunculi dashed this way and that, responsive to his every word.
“Shit!” Aristodeus cried, as blue sparks showered from the underside of the arch.
The homunculi all froze, some of them exchanging look
s that were hard to read. Worry, maybe. Or perhaps mirth.
The spark shower reversed its course and disappeared back into the keystone.
“Eureka!” Aristodeus said. He sat up and slapped the block to his right. It answered with a low hum and a soft amber pulse. “How’s it look your end, Jezeel?” he asked a perfectly bald homunculus—a woman that Shadrak at first took to be naked and silver-skinned, till he looked again and realized she was wearing a very tight-fitting outfit of some shiny material.
“Calibrated, Techno… sir,” she replied.
“Aristodeus,” the philosopher said. “How many times?” He threw up his hands, shook his head, then reached inside his toga.
“Signal’s good from Londinium,” a bearded homunculus said, holding up a sleek gray rectangle, as if that proved his point.
Aristodeus popped a pipe in his mouth, fished about in his pocket some more and produced a box of matches. “Good,” he muttered around the stem. “Then we’re ready to…” He spun round and glared at Mephesch. His eyes widened as they took in Shadrak, Albert, and Ekyls, before coming to rest on Nameless. “You’re early; and no, this is not a good time.”
Nameless harrumphed, and he began to toss his axe from hand to hand. “A menu, if you don’t mind, laddie. And be quick about it.”
Aristodeus broke his match as he struck it against the side of the box. “What? Can’t you see I’m busy?” The second match took, and he lit his pipe, sucking at the stem till he had it going strongly.
“And you’ll be busy again, once I’m fed. Your idea, remember? If I’d had my way—”
“Yes, yes,” Aristodeus snapped. “You’d be a desiccated corpse in the bowels of Arx Gravis. “One day, my friend, you’ll thank me for sticking my neck out for you. There are some very powerful people who’d much rather you’d gotten what you wanted.”