Travelers

by K A Riley

  While I curse and call Cardyn a string of names I know my father wouldn’t have approved of, Grizzy belts out a saliva-laced guffaw before wiping her mouth and eyes and “compliments” Cardyn on his so-called expertise.

  Still chortling through her nose, she reaches under the counter and comes up with a crossbow roughly the size of a cello.

  The thing has a thick wooden shaft with a polished stock, curved to fit over the shoulder. It’s topped off by a metal hand-crank attached to round cams on either side of the bow that I’m guessing are designed to cock the cable into position.

  Grizzy slaps a quiver of arrows onto the counter next to the huge crossbow. “Any takers?”

  “Not me,” Rain says, backing away, her hands up.

  “Wise choice,” Cardyn grunts from over his shoulder as he tries to pry out the blade of Manthy’s tomahawk axe that’s lodged six inches deep in the wall. “That thing’s bigger than you.”

  “I’ll take it,” Brohn says. He clamps his hand onto the crossbow, slides its leather strap over his head, and slings the huge weapon around onto his back. “I used one like this in the Valta,” he boasts to Grizzy. “Our hometown.”

  “Yeah, but that crossbow was about a third this size,” I remind him.

  “It’s called an ‘arbalest.’” Grizzy explains. “Think of it as a crossbow on steroids.”

  “Hey! I’ll take these,” Rain calls to us from down at the end of the weapons-filled counter. She holds up what looks from here like a pair of leather gloves with some kind of steel framework built around them.

  She slips each of the fingerless gauntlets onto her wrists.

  “What are they?” Cardyn asks, walking back to us and securing Manthy’s twin axes onto their mag-holster.

  With the gauntlets pulled on, Rain extends both arms toward Cardyn and squeezes her hands into tight fists.

  There’s a double flash of silver.

  Cardyn shrieks and plunges to the floor as two thin darts zip over his head and stick into the wall on either side of the deep gash where he just finished prying out his axe.

  Grizzy gives Rain an impressed, “Ahhh…not bad. I see you found the dart-drivers. Got a nice synthetic, neuromuscular blocker built right inta each breakaway tip. Knock ya out cold before ya know ya been hit.”

  Unlike Grizzy, Brohn’s not impressed at all. He stalks over and confronts Rain, towering over her like an oak about ready to crush a shrub. “What the hell are you doing, Rain?”

  “What?”

  “You could’ve killed him!”

  Rain’s eyes go big, and she follows Brohn’s finger to where Cardyn is dusting himself off and staring at the two silver barbs still quivering in the wall.

  With Brohn looming over her, she looks kind of scared, but then she puts her hand on his chest, her fingers splayed out like a small starfish, and tells him not to panic. “They’re wrist-mounted dart-drivers, Brohn. Spring-loaded and designed to project these little stingers at bullet-speed.” Holding up a cluster of more silver darts, Rain turns to me and Terk and gives us a little shrug. “I read about them in a viz-cap on weapons when I was little.”

  “I don’t care,” Brohn says through clenched teeth. He slaps Rain’s hand away from his chest. “We can’t afford to mess around. It’s going to be hard enough staying alive over here without having to worry about us getting killed by each other.” He turns to give Cardyn a steely glare. “That means you, too.”

  While Cardyn mouths a sheepish, “I’m sorry,” Rain takes a half step toward Brohn so the two of them are practically toe-to-toe. Looking up at him, she asks with a sinister smile if this means he’s in charge now.

  That seems to deflate him, and he takes a step back, his hands up, palms out. “I’m not saying anything of the sort. I just don’t want us taking unnecessary risks.”

  “That’s fine,” Rain says. She turns her back to him and returns to the counter to collect a leather quiver of the little arrows, which she hooks to a carabiner on her belt. “Let me know when you think a risk is necessary.”

  Seeming tickled by the drama playing out in front of her, Grizzy shakes off her amused grin and asks me what weapon I’m interested in.

  “I don’t know,” I shrug. “We’ve all been trained with firearms.” I hold up my fists. “Or with these.” On the counter, Render hops over some of the daggers and swords, inspecting his reflection in their silvery surfaces. “Or him.”

  “‘e’s a weapon, is ‘e?”

  “Best there is,” I grin.

  “Then I’ve got the perfect thing for ya.” Grizzy pushes aside a pile of knives and draws out two long gloves.

  “Those don’t look like much.”

  “Try ‘em on.”

  I slip the black leather gloves onto my hands. They’re thin but strong, and I can feel some kind of metal structure sewn into the material running halfway along my forearm. The tops of the gloves kind of tulip out before tapering down toward my wrist. Otherwise, they look and feel like odd but not especially unusual gloves.

  Grizzy assures me they’re plenty unusual. “Press the ‘eels o’ yer ‘ands together.”

  I do, but nothing happens. Grizzy tells me to “Try ‘arder.”

  This time, I slap the heels of my hands together with a solid thrust, and I’m startled when a curved, five-inch blade—long and flat and razor-sharp as a steak knife—snaps out of a cartridge in the wrist of each glove and curls over each of my fingers and thumbs.

  “They’re called the Tower o’ London Talons,” Grizzy says with a smile as Brohn and the others come over to inspect my new toy. “People say they was invented by one o’ the ol’ Ravenmasters a lotta years back.”

  I’m about to ask her more about the Ravenmasters when I realize she’s scanning us up and down. She’s got a deep scowl set into her wide, furrowed face like she’s just opened her bedroom door to a room full of cockroaches.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  Grizzy gives me a grunt of disapproval but doesn’t answer.

  “What is it?” I ask again, trying hard to keep the irritation out of my voice.

  Grizzy shakes her head, her face contorted into something between a laugh and a sob. “It’s yer clothes.”

  8

  Weapons

  “Our clothes? What about them?”

  “Won’t do ‘ere.”

  Shuffling over to a set of cabinets next to the weapons cache, Grizzy draws out three gray plastic totes, which she sets out one at a time.

  “Hey! Is that food?” Cardyn calls over, leaning forward from where he’s sitting down at the far end of the counter. A glimmer of drool pools in the corners of his mouth as he shuffles his way toward us.

  Grizzy’s unkempt mane of shaggy hair wafts around her face when she shakes her head. “Clothes.” She gives the five of us an up and down look of disdain. “Can’t ‘ave ya bootin’ around in them get ups. Get ya killed, that kit will.”

  “I like the way she talks,” Terk say to me in what he probably thinks is a whisper.

  “Never mind how I talk, Mongo. Wakey-wakey to what I say. ‘ere.”

  The clothes she spreads out for us on the counter are a hodgepodge of tunics, bodices, corsets, sheepskin cloaks, cowls, habits, leather boots, wool capes, straw hats, bonnets, segmented plates of shoulder armor, steel and leather gauntlets, and Medieval style chain mail.

  Her face scrunched up in disgust, Rain holds up a cream-colored, satin corset with tiny buckles on the front and ribbons of white lace threaded through rows of a dozen eyelets on either side. “Seriously?”

  “When in Rome, right?” Brohn grins.

  “If we were in Rome, we’d be in togas,” I remind him.

  “Togas were primarily ceremonial,” the Auditor’s voice offers. “Not to be confused with the stola, a type of pleated, double-belted dress designed to differentiate female citizens of Rome from prostitutes.”

  “You know—” I start to say, but Cardyn cuts me off with a raised hand.

  He
proceeds to scan Rain up and down before pointing back and forth between her and the dainty corset she’s holding pinched between her thumb and finger like it’s a decomposing animal pelt. “You…in that. Now that I’d pay to see.”

  “You’re not going to be able to see anything with my fist in your eye,” Rain sneers, tossing the corset back onto the pile.

  Cardyn takes a giant step back as the rest of us start swapping our military-style combat boots and tactical vests for the assortment of leather boots and various medieval garments laid out on the counter.

  We keep our army-issue cargo pants, but, on Grizzy’s advice, Rain and I have to cover ours in skirts.

  “That’s a little sexist, don’t you think?” Rain asks.

  “We got ta pick our battles,” Grizzy responds with a sympathetic sigh.

  Rifling through the pile, I choose a full-length black battle dress with triangular leather patches, a double belt of black leather with a square silver buckle, and thin plates of oval-shaped armor sewn into the elbows and shoulders of the form-fitting sleeves.

  Rain slips into a white blouse, a red leather vest, and mostly red, ankle-length skirt in tartan plaid with a thin leather drawstring.

  She tosses back the white, frilly-rimmed bonnet Grizzy suggests would look nice with the outfit.

  “How do I look?” she asks, giving a very un-Rain-like twirl.

  “You look beautiful,” I sigh. Rain always looks beautiful.

  After agreeing with me, Brohn and Cardyn manage to stop staring at Rain long enough to start sifting through a collection of suede doublets, cloaks, and tunics.

  Terk pulls on a brown Franciscan habit with an oversized hood, baggy sleeves to hide his prosthetic parts, and enough room in the shoulders and back to conceal the Auditor. The whole ensemble is tied off at the waist with a long length of weathered rope.

  “I feel like an idiot,” Terk groans from somewhere deep under the cavernous hood.

  Cardyn claps him on the shoulder, laughing. “Congratulations! You’re Friar Terk!”

  Once we’re outfitted and looking like five kids who couldn’t decide if they wanted to be marines, medieval knights, witches, or damsels in distress for Halloween, Brohn, Cardyn, Rain, Terk, and I follow Grizzy over to a table in the corner of the room where she says we can have some breakfast before she escorts us into the city.

  She wedges her way out from behind the counter with two huge mason jars clutched in her arms.

  As we sit, she begins distributing protein cubes sealed in crinkly aluminum packaging that she plucks from the glass jars. “An’ where is it ya need ta go, anyway?”

  “Tower of London,” I tell her.

  “Hm.”

  “What is it?”

  “Nuffin’. Only that it’s on the far side o’ some of the worst places ya’d never want ta be.”

  “We don’t have a lot of choice,” Rain explains. “We have a mission, and apparently there’s someone there who can help us on our way.”

  “Hm. That’d be the Llyr and Penddarunne, the Ravenmasters.”

  “Ravenmasters?” I ask, my eyes wide.

  “Sure. Husband and wife. Got a kid, too.”

  “And you know them?”

  “Know about ‘em. Spent most o’ me life right ‘ere, on the outskirts. Not exactly a line o’ folks tryin’ ta get inta the city, eh? Most’ll want out. Folks my age got out a long time ago. Or else they didn’t.” Grizzy lets out a deep sigh. “‘Course, there’s not really anywhere else ta go, one way or the other. It’s either get killed inside the city or else starve to death outside of it.”

  Rain starts plying Grizzy with questions about London and explaining more about who we are and why we’re here. Render is over on the countertop, busily pecking with annoyed clicks at the remainder of the weapons Grizzy laid out for us and the heaps of clothes we didn’t take. Cardyn is complaining to Terk about the temperature and the blandness of the protein cubes and the slurry of porridge Grizzy just set out in chipped ceramic bowls.

  With everyone else occupied, I tug Brohn’s sleeve and gesture for him to follow me.

  “Kress and I are going for a stroll. We’ll be right back,” he says lightly, offering up an apologetic excuse to the others.

  He follows me out into the dim, dusty corridor.

  “What is it?” he asks as the thick metal door groans shut behind us on a set of rusty hinges.

  Before he has time to react, I clutch the lapels of his knee-length, cowhide jacket in my fists and slam him up against the wall, my forearms pressed hard against his abdomen and chest.

  I smile into his startled eyes and push myself up onto my tiptoes to give him a kiss. It’s a long one, a firm one, and it’s one I’ve been holding in for way too long now.

  Laughing, Brohn pushes me away for a second before pulling me back, and we kiss again.

  “Listen,” I say at last, drawing away with great effort. “About our mission…”

  “Finding other Emergents?”

  “Well, that’s Granden’s mission for us.”

  Brohn stops mid-smile. “Did you have some other mission in mind?”

  I run my finger and thumb along the fabric of his jacket and press my head to his chest. He drapes his arm across my shoulders, pulling me into a warm hug while he waits for me to finish.

  “Back in D.C….,” I begin. “…the day before we left…before the attack by the Devoteds…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I had a…conversation with Render.”

  “A conversation.”

  “An unusual conversation.”

  “I’d say any conversation with a bird qualifies as unusual.”

  “True.”

  “Remember how I told you guys on the plane that I thought Render might be hiding something?”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s not totally hidden. He told me some things.”

  “Did he happen to say where he disappeared to for two weeks after we finished off Krug?”

  “He was vague about that part. But he implied…no, he kind of insisted that Caldwell was right about my father tapping into something beyond this single universe.”

  “I remember Caldwell saying something about that. He said you, Render, and your mom…sorry—I mean the Auditor…were three parts of the same project.”

  “I think maybe we are. Call it a gut feeling. A gut feeling reinforced by Render. And now, I’ve got a special project of my own. Top secret. So you can’t say anything to the others. Not yet, anyway.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s crazy. And dangerous. And absolutely essential. And…did I say crazy?”

  “You did.”

  “Good. Because it is. I’ll tell the others soon. For now, though, it’s got to be between you and me. Got it?”

  “Why the mystery?”

  “Just promise, okay?”

  Brohn drags his finger back and forth across his chest. “Cross my heart.” He slips his hand under my chin and gently lifts my eyes to his before pulling back. “So, Kress…what’s this grand, secret mission of yours?”

  “I’m going to get Manthy. I’m going to bring her back from the other side.”

  9

  Train

  With his arms extended and his hands planted firmly on my shoulders, Brohn leans away and looks down at me. “The other side? The other side of what?”

  I don’t bother answering, because I know he knows.

  Besides, if I say it out loud right now, he really might think I’m crazy. Or obsessed. Or both.

  Brohn’s eyes go dark with doubt. “Manthy is…”

  “I know.”

  “Her body is back in…”

  “I know.”

  “Then how…?”

  I’m just working out the best way to elaborate when the Canteen door slams open, and Grizzy marches out into the hallway.

  “Okay, you two! Time ta move an’ all!”

  Behind her, Cardyn, Rain, and Terk also file out of the Canteen. The
y all duck as Render flies out from behind them and flutters to a landing on my shoulder.

  Dancing in place, he leans forward to belch out a short greeting as I invite him into my consciousness.

  Grizzy tells me Render’s a nice touch. “I still think yer bloody barmy for wantin’ to go willy-nilly out into the beastly ol’ Great Wen. Still, a good accessory like ‘im could scare folks off real good or at least keep ‘em from askin’ too many questions.”

  ~ Tell her I’m not an accessory.

  “He’s not an accessory. He’s my…partner.”

  “Sorry, Hun. Didn’t mean nuffin’ by it. Just what with the afflictions, the weather, an’ the war an’ all, Death has kind o’ moved in ta stay. Yer partner there might seriously do ya some good in frightenin’ off some o’ the baddies, though.”

  “What exactly happened here, anyway?” Rain asks, flicking her eyes skyward. “What we saw from up there…”

  Shrugging, Grizzy swats away Rain’s question. “Same as happens everywhere. Folks get scared. Folks get dumb. Folks get killed. You tellin’ me it’s any different where you all are from?”

  Cardyn presses forward and leans around Rain to get Grizzy’s attention. “I’m sorry. Did you say ‘afflictions’?”

  “Sure. Afflictions.”

  “As in…?”

  “Disease. Sickness. Honkin’ dicky. You know…the new plague…viral infections. Big bout o’ Dracunculiasis in 2025.”

  “Dracu—?”

  “Dracunculiasis. Guinea worm disease.”

  When we stare blankly, Grizzy, unfortunately, elaborates. “That’s when a female worm—real bugger of a parasite—burrows inta ya. Right into ya. Through cuts or sores, in yer ears, or sometimes right up yer bum. Wiped out a few ‘undred thousand. Nukes and Cyst Plague did in the rest.”

  “Cyst Plague?” Terk gulps.

  “Some called it the ‘Checkmate Flu.’ Or the ‘Honkin’ Pestilence.’ Either way, it made the covids look like the flu and the flu look like a breath o’ fresh country air. Anyone left after that was fair game for the Scroungers and Roguers.”

  Grizzy parts her furry coat and lifts the shirt underneath to reveal her side where it looks like someone or something really big has taken a bite out of her. The red-rimmed area is a deep indentation of twisted, blistery skin. “I’m a survivor of both, me. Drac Disease and the Cyst Plague. Ain’t made a worm or a virus what could take me down.”