by Cory Herndon
“Zombies?” Teysa asked.
“Yes,” the half-demon replied. “Workers for the northern farms.”
“They yours?”
“As a matter of fact, they are. I have a Devkarin overseer out there, but I take care of the details with labor.”
“Then move them closer to the fields.”
“But Baroness,” the wageboss said, “the Selesnyans will never allow the undead so near the Vitar Yescu. They interfere with its life energy or some such nonsense.”
“Then put them in the flats,” Teysa said. “They’re undead, right? The kuga can’t be too hard on them.”
“Perhaps,” the half-demon replied, “but there are essential services, especially climate control, that those types require.”
“What do you mean?”
“They dry out, Baroness.”
Teysa examined the map. Utvara was roughly the shape of an egg, if one counted the fringes of the Husk region. Inside that shape a rectangular township filled the southern two thirds of the egg—the township proper, sliced by the wide thoroughfare and numerous alleys and byways. The Vitar Yescu sat north of center, bordering the farmlands, and there were several other Selesnyan-looking structures nearby. North of the farmlands were the flats, which included the Cauldron project.
The flats that filled the northern third of the Utvara region, or rather what was under them, were the main reason this township had sprung up even before the end of the fallow period. The flats had been some kind of ceremonial square long before disease hit the area. No records of its construction existed. Whatever it had been, it had become a huge, flat dead zone where nothing could grow and where the plague winds blew unimpeded. Roughly twenty years ago, a bold, destitute explorer braved the plague in a homemade survival suit and broke through the bricks of the old square to find miles of lifeless, buried city—abandoned, cold, and technically unclaimed. The township formed then, despite Guildpact law, with a little help from Uncle. It was little more than a boomtown outpost, and the life churchers were expanding like a healthy tree, thanks to their, well, healthy tree.
“Wageboss, you’re a local,” she said. “What is the range of the Vitar Yescu’s effects? Where can you go without contracting the disease? Assuming one is not undead, of course.”
“The safe zone extends maybe a quarter mile into the flats,” Aradoz said. “Beyond that, you need a sphere helmet and a miner’s suit, at the very least.”
“Perfect,” Teysa said with a smile. “I want you to go to a few of these enclaves, or whatever they are, clear them out, and house at least some of your deadwalkers there. Quarter the Selesnyans in that area of the flats that’s still within range of the Vitar Yescu, and see about moving a few Rakdos up there too. Give the ’churchers a reason to proselytize. Everybody’s happy.”
“Well, I—That is, very well,” the wageboss said. “But what if the undead somehow affect the behavior of the Vitar Yescu? We all rely on that.”
“Oh, let the life churchers shoot any zombie that gets too close. Maybe give them an enclave between the tree and the deadwalkers. Fair enough?”
“And the guildless?”
“Why not hire them too?” Teysa said. “This is just the first of many projects I have planned. I’ll let you in on a little secret, Wageboss. I’m not happy that this Izzet Cauldron was built on my property. The deal wasn’t a good one. It’s not smart to rely on unproven methods, and frankly I’m annoyed that the biggest structure in town is, at the moment, the property of the Magewrights.” She effortlessly flowed from scowl number six to ingratiation number eleven. “Therefore, I’m going to keep you employed for a long time making the rest of this place into an Orzhov barony. The plague is nothing compared to what I have in mind.”
The wageboss’s jowls dropped. “Baroness,” he managed, “with what shall I purchase materials? All these new workers? I serve the Orzhov and the Karlov family without reservation, but—”
“I’m sure the union’s coffers have some petty cash available. Once my new home is built, we can discuss your fees for future projects, which I’m sure you’ll find more than generous.”
“But I am merely a union man. What you’re asking would require an army, Baroness,” Aradoz said. He waved at the plans on the table. “I’m just supposed to do this?”
“If you don’t, I’m sure I can find someone ambitious enough to do it,” Teysa said. “Perhaps he will let you stay on as hired labor, if you’re still alive.” She nodded to her attendant, who produced small broach set with a ball of onyx bearing the Karlov ouroboros. She stepped around the table and pinned the jewelry to the wageboss’s chest. “This should help you get things done. Don’t let me down.”
“Is that—?” The half-demon gaped at the sudden turn of events and at Teysa’s employment of smile number fifteen. “I won’t let you down,” he parroted.
“Melisk, we are finished here,” Teysa said. “Please escort the wageboss to the door. Oh, and Aradoz?”
“Yes?”
“If ground has not broken on the mansion by sundown, Melisk is going to kill you and replace you with someone who can do the job.”
“You can’t do that!” Aradoz shouted. “I’m in charge of—”
“Nothing,” Teysa said. “I, meanwhile, am in charge of everything. That pin won’t come off, Wageboss. One would think someone in your position would wish to ingratiate himself to one such as me. The rewards should be obvious—leaving here with your life, for example.”
The wageboss opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, and nodded. Teysa knew that Melisk’s gaze could intimidate a bull ogre and didn’t have to look to see her attendant was giving Aradoz maybe sixty percent of his maximum glare. She was impressed by the wageboss, who had obviously earned his position at the top. Most opposing parties couldn’t handle a quarter of the full Melisk.
Teysa tapped the corners of the map, and the image flickered, swirled, and coalesced back into the plans for her new mansion.
“There you are,” Teysa said. “Do you require any more of my valuable time?”
The half-demon shook his head.
When the wageboss had gone, walking backward until he cleared the door that the thrulls shut behind him, Teysa swiveled in her chair and smirked at Melisk. “Who’s been waiting longest?”
Melisk closed his eyes for a moment and communed with Phleeb, standing watch at the door. A moment later he said, “First Acolyte Wrizfar Barkfeather of the Selesnyan Conclave, Holy Protector of the Vitar Yescu, Knight of—”
“Ah, hoped so,” Teysa said. Her smirk broke into a grin. “We’ll see him last. Send in that doctor next. The Simic. And remember, I will ask for your opinion when I desire it.”
“Yes Baroness.”
* * * * *
The towering shape that blocked out the moon was roughly humanoid, with a blunted head made from concrete and stone, arms of wiry metal bars with scrap-iron knuckles that grazed the ground, and a skeleton of girders rusted together by time and fused by magic. The monster reeked of dead rats and tangy corrosion—a cloud of rank odor that washed over the spread-eagle goblin as the Gruul bandit she was strapped to thought better of this challenge and barked a retreat.
The Gruul called it a “nephilim,” a word with elements of the ancient Draconic tongue implying godlike power. Crix found it hard to argue with the assessment. Her vantage point let her see how painfully easy it was for the rusting nephilim to keep up with them—the junk creature would be on top of them in seconds. Fortunately, she’d been able to pick out her personal captor’s name among the Gruul chatter.
“Excuse me, Golozar,” she shouted over her pinned shoulder. “I feel compelled to tell you that I have a way of stopping this creature. Will you consider untying me?”
The Gruul spun around, realized the speaker was on his back, and cocked his head to one side. “What makes you think we can’t handle this?” Golozar then switched to guttural Gruul. “Beast-wards, strike the hind legs. Wait for the rest of us
to strike the right forelimb first. I’m going for the head.”
“Are you insane?” Crix screamed.
“I’ve seen your kind before, goblin. Learned types, studying us like animals, never bothering to help unless you, too, are in trouble. And now you offer to humiliate me in front of my people?” Golozar said. “I would not recommend that. Shut up and watch.”
Aren’t I facing the wrong way for that? Crix thought, but she didn’t say it. She wasn’t really in immediate danger, not yet, even if her limbs were going numb. Numb or not, the tattoo could burn through the straps with a single thought. Couriers were protected by special magic, and couriers that lasted as long as they knew when and how to use it.
The Gruul started jogging toward the junk-covered behemoth, circling around and scanning the area. The smell became unbearable, and finally caused her to shout.
“Are you crazy?” Crix said. “What are you people doing? You can’t—You can’t fight that! We’ve got to run!”
“Quiet,” the Gruul behind her snarled. “You don’t know what the Gruul can do, goblin.”
Crix was baffled but kept her mouth shut. They had indeed been running, but the small raid party had stopped short at an area that was even more riddled with crevices and cracks than the sections of the Husk they’d already crossed. As the Gruul turned left and right, obviously scanning the area, she saw even more fissures—this area was filled with them.
The whole place was a deadfall for something as huge as the lumbering creature that even now closed in. She couldn’t see the nephilim, but she could see its shadow and hear its thudding approach. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted other members of the Gruul raiding party splitting up and spreading out.
“That thing is made of junk,” Crix muttered. “How is a fall going to kill it?”
She must have muttered more loudly than she thought, because the Gruul behind her answered, “Killing it is impossible. Things like it have been lurking in these hills forever. But we can get rid of it for a while.”
“You sure speak good Ravi for an ignorant savage,” Crix said.
“You expose your own ignorance with your words,” the Gruul replied. “Education is not reserved for brainy goblins.”
Crix readied a response but didn’t get a chance to give it—the rusty ground behind her was beginning to creak and groan as though it were a living thing. It sounded hungry.
* * * * *
“I don’t want any trouble, Baroness … Baroness … Baroness…?” the vedalken stuttered.
“‘Baroness’ will do,” Teysa said. “I can’t imagine what kind of trouble you mean, Doctor Nebun.”
“Why ask me about the kuga plague?” the vedalken asked, exuding paranoia.
“I’m told you represent local Simic Combine interests, in their entirety,” Teysa replied and pressed her fingertips together with her elbows on the table to rest her chin.
“The Simic did not create the plague!” the doctor said, coming out of his seat. For a vedalken, it was the equivalent of blind human fury. “Do you know what I have to put up with in this town? Everyone thinks that just because it’s a disease, it must have been created by one of us. As if that’s all the Simic Combine does. And even if I did have something to do with it—”
Teysa grabbed one of the vedalken’s flailing hands in her own and slammed it down onto the table. “Doctor! Listen.”
The vedalken nodded.
“Listening?”
The vedalken nodded again.
“Good,” Teysa said. “I don’t care who invented the plague. All I want to know is what it is, how it works, and how to get rid of it when I need to.”
“Oh, is that all,” Dr. Nebun blurted and covered his mouth.
“I don’t like Selesnyans, Doctor,” Teysa said, “so that means you get the job. I want a cure, and I don’t want anything that will put me in debt to the Conclave. You’re not to base any of your work on their Vitar Yescu or any of their tricks. Do you understand me? There will be no quietmen or hive-minds controlling Utvara as long as I’m here.”
“But why me?” the doctor said.
“I don’t explain myself, Doctor,” Teysa said. She pushed back from the table and rested her hands behind her head, a neutral smile gracing her face. “It doesn’t have to happen right away. You’ll find I’m quite reasonable.”
“It would take weeks just to gather my notes,” the doctor said.
“Reasonable, not stupid,” Teysa said. “Begin experimenting and find me something that doesn’t come from the Selesnyan Conclave in any way within, say, a week. After that, we’ll start talking about charges.”
“Charges?” the doctor stuttered. “Of course, I couldn’t be expected to do this for free, I will—”
“Melisk,” Teysa said. The attendant handed her a small but thick ledger bound with satin ribbon. “This is the first volume. In your time in this township, you’ve violated Guildpact laws I didn’t even know existed, and, in case you hadn’t heard, I’m an advokist. I believe you would call me a ‘lawmage.’ Now before we get too far, I just want you to know—your light at the end of this tunnel is the destruction of those records. No charges will be filed. Now what do you say?”
The doctor rose, this time to bow deeply. “I will do it.”
“Of course you will,” Teysa said. She handed the ledger back to Melisk, who tucked it into his pocket. “Now, before you go, tell me about the kuga plague.”
“It’s deadly. It rots the skin and devours the lungs.”
“It is painful?” Teysa asked.
“What do you think?” the doctor said.
“But it’s not the original plague,” Teysa said.
“No, but as I said, no one, least of all the Simic Combine, has any knowledge whatsoever of the origin of the plague, or why—”
“Doctor, do that one more time and you’ll be getting around your laboratory on stumps,” Teysa said pleasantly. “Information, not protestation. You’re a vedalken. I’m sure you don’t need notes to give me the gist.”
“All right, all right,” the doctor said. He sat back in his seat and his face shifted to a thoughtful scowl of concentration. “According to records I found in the public domain and my own independent research—which as I said had nothing, nothing to do with the creation of this dread disease—the original plague was spread mostly through physical contact. Simple touching, nothing else was needed.”
“So to clear out the population and finish off the disease, the place was declared fallow,” Teysa said.
“Yes,” the doctor nodded. “But a tribe of Gruul who had lived in the region and been the prime carriers of the original plague developed strong immunity. The fallow period was an ineffective means of clearing out the area for reclamation.”
“You sound as if you know of this original plague firsthand, Doctor. Are you an original settler of the township, by any chance?”
“Why?”
“Just wondering.”
“Yes, actually,” the doctor said. “May I continue?”
“Go ahead,” Teysa said.
“The Gruul immunity eventually robbed the disease of any means of spreading, though it remained in their blood,” the doctor continued. “Even so, to ensure the plague was truly gone and to satisfy Guildpact Statutes, the fallow period needed to continue. That was when your family decided to speed things up, I believe, by bringing in the Izzet.” Nebun spat the name of the magewrights’ guild.
“The mana-compression device, as I remember,” Teysa said. “Effective enhancement, from the look of it.”
“If you don’t mind holes in your sky,” the doctor said.
“The Schism.”
“Of course the Schism. And a mutated, wind-born plague. The energy that thing used, it devoured every living thing all right. But the plague wasn’t living, exactly. It was waiting. So the energy that ate everything else caused a mutation that was built into the original plague as a reaction to such—oh, dear.”
“Yo
u are in a verity circle,” Teysa said. “Little admissions like that will happen. The plague was built. Interesting. But strangely, you also were telling the truth when you said the Simic Combine had nothing to do with creating the plague. We’ll talk about that more at a later time, I think. Now let’s go on.”
“The mutation turned the plague airborne, as I said, but the peculiar history and geography of the Utvara region kept it more or less confined to this area.”
“Almost as if the plague wanted to stay here, eh?” Teysa said.
“I did not say that,” the doctor said.
“So why are my foothills still packed with Gruul, Doctor?” Teysa said. “Why did a Gruul raiding party attack and murder a patriarch—a patriarch, Nebun—before my very eyes?”
“The mutation was not enough to completely overcome the immunity they carry in their blood,” the doctor confessed.
“But they’re all different species,” Teysa said. “Centaur, human, goblin, viashino—and that’s just counting the four types I saw coming after our lokopede. How do they pass this down through generations?”
“Those are descendants of the original Utvar Gruul,” the doctor said. “I have run blood comparison studies on many of them, as your ledger no doubt tells you.” The vedalken’s voice became tinged with pride. “The humans have been interbreeding with the other humanoids too.”
“Not sure I like the way you say that, Doctor,” Teysa said. “You have a problem with humans?”
“Only that they keep mucking up otherwise orderly bloodlines,” the doctor said.
“Charming,” Teysa replied. “So what does the kuga do to these new-and-improved super-Gruul?”
“Just Gruul, I believe,” the doctor said, obliviously. “It shortens the Gruul lifespan, and it should kill them after a few years. There’s some chieftain out there though. He’s the one who keeps them as cohesive as they are. According to my Gruul test subjects, he is the one who found a wild fungus that shared many properties with the Vitar Yescu. The Gruul wear it all over their bodies.”
“Which you had nothing to do with, of course,” Teysa said.