Dead Boys

by Gabriel Squailia

  “‘You citizen,’” she said, strutting about in imitation of Jean-Luc, “‘you think ze flesh is what hold you together, non? But ze flesh, it is only hold you back!’

  “Our bones, Jacob, are solid incarnations of will. You already know that much from your days as a preservative agent.”

  “Preservationi—”

  “Point is, our bones are our beings. They hold together unless they’re physically separated. And once the flesh is out of their way, we see what we are and what we can do so much more clearly.

  “The way I hold onto my dust is the same way you hold onto your head: I just have more focus, because of my training. Shailesh taught me how to focus with such precision that I can manipulate a grain of dust as easily as you can manipulate your fingers.

  “So, like I said, I don’t have to think about this thread: I am it.”

  “But the strength of that dust—”

  “It’s immense!” She drew her spine up straight and chopped the air with her hand. “‘A warrior makes every bone a bullet, Siham! A warrior makes those bones that are not bullets into shields, Siham! A warrior makes the dust between those bones that are not bullets and are not shields into the cutting edge, Siham!’”

  She dropped the impression and drew her arm back. “Now behold as I demonstrate the cutting edge of the bone sculptors.” Siham flicked her wrist, extending her hand a foot away from her forearm on a thread of dust. In an instant, the thread trebled in size, growing dense and fuzzy around the edges and humming like a tuning fork.

  “The dust—”

  “Vibrates,” she said. She picked up a stone from the path, tossed it in the air, and swung her hand up past it. When the stone collided with the wire of dust between the bones it buzzed, then fell to the ground in two.

  “Thus endeth the lesson,” said Siham, her hand snapping back into place. “Let’s get going, huh?”

  Jacob caught up to her, his mind whirling. “Are all of the Bonemen like you?”

  “Goodness no. I’m a snowflake.”

  They continued along the side of Lethe, drawing near enough to its source that the hulking shape of Bald Mountain could be seen through the mist, the cave from which the river sprung a dark shadow at its base. Staring into the darkness that had brought him here, Jacob wondered why he’d never made the pilgrimage before.

  He was startled by the sound of three scavengers hauling a box full of dripping goods down the path before them, their bloated faces split with the success of their haul. As soon as they saw Jacob and Siham they fell silent, studying the river’s surface intently as they passed by. Jacob was confused by this sudden change in demeanor until he glanced at the river, on whose rippling surface he saw a debtor reflected.

  “No wonder they were spooked!” he muttered. “I look like an agent of the Magnate, and you, forgive me, are a fearful sight to any citizen.” He pulled the robe over his head and tossed it into the river, cursing at the rippling image of gore-streaked bones peeking through decimated flesh. He was naked now but for the leather pouch the debtors had left hanging at his wrist. “Not that this is much of an improvement.”

  “Me, I like the look of bone,” said Siham, who arranged her phalanges into a chain that ran from wrist to wrist, then began skipping it like a jump-rope. “Fashionable and utilitarian! Come on, Jacob, the Bypass is just ahead.” The northern entrance to the Bazakh Bypass proved no more adorned than its counterpart in the Plains: it was a gaping pit in the ground, surrounded by stalls where the Dead City scavengers were haggling with desert-dried Armory merchants. “It’s a long road,” said Siham, ignoring a vendor of imitation swords who was praising her delicate structure and the refined sensibilities it undoubtedly implied. “You sure you wouldn’t rather be carried? I’m super fast.”

  “This sensation,” said Jacob with a sigh, “must be the last vestige of my pride falling away. Very well: you may carry me.”

  “An excellent decision, sirrah.”

  She hefted him up, piggy-back this time, and he strived mightily to ignore the stares of the corpses around them. Without warning, she burst into motion, lashing into the darkness of the Bypass, where a long, flat stretch gave her room to pick up speed. She leaped over fissures in the rock and careened around corpses traveling in both directions while Jacob tightened his grip on her ribs.

  By Siham’s reckoning, they were nearly half-way through the Bypass when an overwhelming uptick in traffic slowed her pace, forcing her to seek openings in the crowd.

  “Too bad I can’t run on the ceiling,” she muttered. “Remind me to work on that when we get to White City.”

  The tunnel, which at its narrowest could hold ten men abreast, was packed from wall to wall with excited corpses carrying nothing more than the weapons in their hands, which they had no apparent desire to use against one another. In fact, these disenfranchised Plainsmen had nothing more urgent to do than compare notes on what had recently become the talk of the Plains: the emergence of that Ur-monster known as the Last Man Standing.

  “I tellest thee, Elspeth, we shouldest have stoodest against that mangle-beast!” moaned a passing slab of cured muscle that Jacob recognized as Oxnard. “’Twas our destiny to do’t, and now we are devoid.”

  “Halt your jabbering jaw and follow where I lead, Ox!” said Elspeth. “No warrior free from the taint of sorcery could stand against that mountain of meat. When they forge corpses of steel instead of bone, we’ll return and fight beside them, but for the nonce, we’ll not wave bashers in the face of fate!”

  “O loathy Lethe!” moaned Oxnard as Siham darted around his bulk. “I oathed nevermore to plash upon her shores. You’ll make an oathbreaker of me, sir!”

  “You oath too much to be otherwise,” said Elspeth. “Now hie!”

  “I know those two,” whispered Jacob. “They’re Plainsmen through and through. If they’re leaving, that means—”

  “That monster you built is a real game-changer, Jacob!” said Siham, loudly enough to turn the head of every nearby warrior.

  “Oh, do let’s advertise,” said Jacob, whose position made it impossible for him to cringe. Luckily, Siham was able to travel faster than rumor, and the story that the Last Man Standing had been summoned by skeletal witches caused them no immediate harm.

  They emerged into an Armory flooded with Plainsmen, where Jacob demanded to be set upon his feet, the better to consider the changes wreaked upon the Plains in his absence. They had arrived at that precise moment when the exodus from the scrimmage had reached critical mass. The Shallow End was buried a mile deep in corpses too astonished by their change in fortunes to fight, and even those merchants whose security forces were strong enough to avoid wholesale looting were packing up their wares and disappearing into the dubious safety of the Bypass. Jacob overheard a squadron, creaking under the weight of Crusader-era armor, discussing the benefits of exiting the Plains through the Torn Curtain and finding a new home by the riverside.

  “What a mess we made,” said Jacob with a touch of pride. “But how will we find the company?”

  “If they’re still with the Last Man Standing, it shouldn’t be hard,” said Siham. “Some of these rumors must be for real. Let’s hit the crowds and see if we can’t scare up a primary source.”

  Wandering southward, they encountered many strange features of a melee domesticated by defeat, not least of which was a warrior Jacob had last seen collecting ears on a skewer excusing himself after stepping on the lady’s toe-bones. Not all the Plainsmen were leaving; from time to time they came across warriors recruiting members for their militias. On the far side of one such group, whose leader proclaimed his plan to defeat the Last Man Standing “the way the Horde would have done it,” Siham spotted the kind of gathering she’d been searching for and pulled Jacob behind her into a ring of corpses listening raptly to a severed head propped up on a cairn of stones.

  “Aye, and a fearsome foe it were!” cried the raconteur, her falsetto emerging from a puckered face that was battle
-scarred long before death. “Its arms was as long as narwhals, and ten-foot blades chewed the air about its knees. I knew on setting eyes upon it that I had but one hope: to land a harpoon near enough its peak that I might climb aboard and divest it of its hoary head.”

  Jacob shoved through the crowd. “Hello there! Madam! Are you quite sure it had only the one head?”

  “Pipe down there in front!”

  “Let the nubbin finish her tale!”

  “Aye,” said the raconteur, “the beastie were one-headed. Many-arméd, many-leggéd, but with a single bonce, and a grimacing, babbling bonce it were, with gnashing teeth and a spine like a horrible puppy-tail.”

  “And the beast had no entourage? No headless companions, or a boy with a crow in his head?”

  Before the raconteur could answer these queries, a rippling wave of shrieks began at the far side of the crowd. “See it with thine own sockets!” she screamed. “Thar be the beastie!”

  The coming thunder of the Last Man’s legs drove the crowd into a frenzy, and it was only luck that kept Jacob from being trampled. Seeing the raconteur’s head booted from its post, he scooped it up and dodged frantically through the mob, searching for a glimpse of Siham.

  A shower of severed limbs and heads pelted the ground around him, and he stared up at the beast’s massive, many-bladed hand rising above him. In moments, nothing but dust stood between them, giving Jacob an unobstructed view of his creation.

  There was no sign of Leopold, nor of the harness that had secured him to the topmost ring of spines. The Last Man Standing now had but a single pair of eyes rolling within Etienne’s skull. From his mouth issued a river of babble, an endless procession of meaningless syllables that stopped Jacob where he stood.

  “Oh, my friend,” he said, dropping to his knees before the monster, “what have I done to you?”

  The beast stopped thrashing and fixed its eyes on him.

  “Pardon me, but oughtn’t you run?” piped the raconteur.

  “No,” said Jacob, “I’ll run no more. I dragged this man from his rest and forced him into this torture. The least I can do is stand before him without cringing—or fall to pieces, as he decides. Etienne, can you see me?” He put a hand out and stepped forward.

  Etienne’s voice erupted in a gabbling howl, and one great arm swooped through the air, its five blades fixed on Jacob’s torso. Jacob bowed his head, girding himself for the sickening snap of his bones—but heard instead a ringing clash, followed by a frustrated stream of speech from above. Jacob looked up in surprise and saw a bulwark of bones branching out like a clump of antlers, bound tightly in place by sturdy threads of dust. Clattering back into shape, Siham said, “Be a doll and keep out of the way now, ‘kay?”

  Jacob staggered behind a boulder with the raconteur as Siham ducked the beast’s hand, only to find two others swinging down from its far side. She had time enough to roll beneath the first, but the second was inescapable; thrusting her tibiae up before her, she bore the force of its blades without suffering a scratch. “We call that ‘marrow-grip,’” she said. “Neat trick, huh?”

  Before the hand had time to withdraw, she ensnared it with dust, wrapping the dislocated bones of her legs around its blades and riding them into the air. When the beast tried to shake her off, she let go, soaring above it and landing squarely behind Etienne’s head.

  The beast was in a quandary: desperate to unseat its foe but fearful of beheading itself, it could do nothing but try to knock her loose. Locking her leg into its ring of spines and glancing down into its thrashing innards, she cried to Jacob, “Remington isn’t here!”

  “I should think not, but Etienne damn well is! Set him loose, Siham.”

  Siham looked dubiously at the babbling head. “I don’t think I can.”

  “Just pull! The clamp’s not half as strong as you.”

  “No, I mean I’ve taken a vow not to harm anyone, and this thing you’ve built seems to be someone. Isn’t it?” At this, the beast stilled, as if this very question had been on its mind. Even Etienne’s babble quieted to a plaintive moan.

  “Ye fight like Bluebeard on a bender,” said the raconteur, “yet ye’ve vowed to hurt none? What be the point?”

  “My skills are defensive,” said Siham. “I have vowed never to divide that which died whole. It’s a whole big thing they make you say before they’ll teach you anything.”

  “Well, there you have it!” said Jacob. “The Last Man Standing didn’t die whole.”

  “Hmp. Well, look, how’s this for a compromise,” she said, slapping her hand onto Etienne’s brow, to the beast’s evident unease. “We’ll swap out the heads. Matey, would you like to be on the winning team?” she asked the raconteur. “No pressure, there’s a field full of potential donors.”

  “A lookout for the beastie?” The raconteur considered briefly. “Aye, that’ll pass the time.” Jacob hurled the raconteur to Siham, who followed his directions in releasing the clamp.

  Once the heads were exchanged, the first wave of warriors representing the Horde’s less terrifying incarnation fell upon the beast, employing various ineffectual tactics with great enthusiasm. During the wholesale rending of flesh that followed, Siham, carrying Jacob and Etienne, dashed toward the center of the Plains, where the recent slaughter had removed all but fallen warriors, and the endless stream of verbiage rushing from Etienne’s mouth could be studied in greater detail.

  “He’s totally out of it,” said Siham.

  “It’s his first level of psychic defense. Next comes catatonia.”

  “Maybe he’ll come around?”

  “I doubt it,” said Jacob. “He’s demonstrated a remarkable resistance in the past, and what he’s suffered as a part of that creature might be as traumatic to him as his death. He’s used to being bodiless but autonomous. To be reduced to a mere appendage, particularly by a creature as fractious and violent as—”

  Suddenly, as if he’d been tuned to another channel, Etienne started talking sense, if manically.

  “Nothing could be bad as that,” he spat, “not Last Man crashing down upon us Leopold torn out of us they fled toward the gate and we were lost inside the beast inside the Plains inside the death inside the void inside—”

  “Did that mean anything to you?” said Siham, for Etienne had taken up again in his unintelligible language as abruptly as he’d left off.

  “Mutiny,” said Jacob. “The beast threw off its reins. I think we’d better try White Gate.”

  “Forward motion!” said Siham, kneeling down and offering her back. “Gee up.”

  “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather walk. This pony-ride business is a trifle degrading.”

  “I’m a racehorse, I’ll have you know,” said Siham, tossing Etienne’s head into Jacob’s arms. “Thoroughbred!”

  On the way, Jacob studied Etienne’s speech. Certain phrases were becoming familiar, patterns were beginning to show, and there was an appearance of syntax that suggested a legitimate language; but even phrases offered to Etienne in his own idiom did nothing to interrupt his steady jabbering. It did grow more subdued as they approached White Gate, becoming an insistent, slithery whisper as they fell beneath the shadow of the Rim, as if Etienne, through the haze of madness, had sense enough to fear returning to this place.

  “I’m sorry, Etienne,” Jacob whispered. “All I ask is the chance to make things better for you. May this not be a step in the wrong direction.”

  Though Jacob was confident that Siham could defend them from any number of debtors, returning to the site of his abduction frightened him, too. With each step he took down that pale hall he flinched at the motion of some imaginary rope. He stared up at the edge of the Rim and gained nothing by it. Were there debtors watching, they were quiet and well-disguised.

  “Even if they’re up there, it doesn’t matter to us,” said Siham, but as they edged around a corner, she stopped, holding up a hand as Jacob caught sight of a body sprawled on the floor.

  F
or a time he could only stare at that pathetic jumble of limbs, so limp and various in direction that it took on the appearance of a man-sized puppet discarded after a grand performance. Then he saw the familiar shapes of his own boots, at the ends of his own legs, and noted the dusty blond hair at the top of it all. “Leopold,” he said. Etienne yelped and was silent for a time.

  As Jacob knelt at his side, Leopold, who had yet to look at them, lifted his head from the floor of the hall. “Ah,” he said softly, “so you’ve led them to me. I can’t blame you for your betrayal. There was never room on this journey for both our quests, was there? One was destined to be sacrificed for the other. It’s as it should be. This folly must end, Jacob. Let it end at last.” Without so much as a glance at Siham, he dropped his face into the dirt again.

  “I haven’t—”

  “I thought it would end with death,” he said to the earth below. “The boy thought so, anyway, the boy Tanner brought through your window, the boy who tried to fashion a man out of lace and bluster. But that boy never left the man’s bones: he’s still here, still as broken as he was at birth, making the same noises, the same messes, only now through time eternal. That cycle of degradation is what I saw so well when I fit the belt around my neck. I see now how ludicrous it was to believe I could escape, but a good joke never really ends, does it? Just keeps on punching.”

  “Leopold—”

  “Let me speak.” He dragged himself partway up, though he had yet to face his audience. “I always knew, you see, that I’d been born into the wrong world. The words that I spoke, the books that I’d stolen them from, confused every relative whose blood and features forced them to acknowledge me as one of their own. I stood out among them like broken crockery, whether in speech or in silence. My father tried to drive the me from me with the strength of his hands, my mother with her screeching voice. But there was no cure for what I was, and the only palliative came in dreaming—the only arena in my existence where I could be king. It wasn’t power itself that I desired, but the freedom from the bottoms of their boots that power could lend me. What I wanted was reversal.