Dead Boys

by Gabriel Squailia

  “Yasmin, that’s bonkers,” said Siham. “You’ve got to admit, it would be a lot less—”

  “I don’t have to admit squat, Bonemaiden!” Yasmin shouted, turning the word into a startling epithet. “Not to a bunch of apprentices too full of their own whoop-de-do to pass some tests that aren’t even that hard! I took a vow, and that vow was to protect people from being ground up into little pieces, and that’s the only thing that nasty man with the metal face has talked about since he’s arrived. Give him over this, and Mortar and Pestle that, and lots of anachronistic, gender-based insults that I don’t care for at all. Anyway. I am sorry to have lost my temper, but I believe the two of you to be out of line. Leopold is this way,” she said, sashaying into the Plaza.

  “Yeesh,” said Siham, but for once she followed along.

  Within the Plaza of the Ancients, they found Leopold struggling in more literal a sense than they’d imagined: he was lashed to a chair made of the bones of two apprentice Seekers, both of whom appeared ready to switch sides. “At last!” shouted Leopold as he spied the company. “Talk some sense into these war-mongering peaceniks, would you? Release me from their dusty grasp so I may indeed parley with the madman turning this city to rubble. Jacob. Siham. Remington. Adam. Eve. Cranium. Do something!”

  “Boneman, Bonemaiden: release this corpse!” said Shailesh. “It is time we acknowledged the lostness of our cause.”

  The human chair retracted its bonds, and Leopold stood, shaking with frustration. “I thought you’d never return,” he said. “When you left, I’d imagined escaping White City would be as easy as slipping out the back door while these underfed lunatics were singing Kumbaya. Instead, they’ve held me hostage while waging an ineffectual war in my name, all because they heard a few grunts discussing the street value of my knuckle-bones! Enough of this madness: I’m off to face the music, just to have something to do.”

  “Let me walk with you,” said Jacob, and in moments Leopold was lurching through the ranks of the Magnate’s minions, enduring their jeers without so much as a sideways glance. The company strode beside him, tailed by Yasmin, Shailesh, Gielgud the Great, and Mistress Ai, who had grudgingly agreed to let Siham come along when it was pointed out that she alone could pose a credible threat to the citizens.

  “I never would have known it was you,” said Leopold, gesturing to Jacob’s skeleton. “Adam and Eve are rather more distinct, and Remy’s missing the back of his head, but you’re indistinguishable from any other newly scrubbed Seeker, at least to my eyes. In a way, it will be a relief to be imprisoned among debtors, who at least have numbers carved in their heads for identification! For months, I’ve been asking Yasmin questions and receiving answers in a baritone.”

  “Months?” said Jacob. “We can’t have been gone that long.”

  “Don’t be a twit,” said Leopold. “Did you imagine all this happened overnight? You’ve been adrift in the telephasic gallimaufry of the polyphonic dust-cloud, or some such hullabaloo; I’d hardly expect you to be able to account for the time. It’s been somewhere between a long while and an age, let’s leave it at that, and I’ve felt every moment acutely.”

  “So you’re really going to surrender?” said Remington.

  “With gratitude! You wouldn’t think anything could be more stultifying than the hair-splitting these buckets of chicken-bones get up to on an average day, but their wartime posturing actually made me long for another Meeting. Better a cool millennium in the Debtor’s Pool than another day of this irritation! May the Magnate do his worst, so long as I’m not disassembled—I’ve found the cure for ambition, and its name is ‘consensus.’”

  “I’m still struggling to understand why the Magnate went to all this expense,” said Etienne. “He has towers full of watches, doesn’t he? Surely a handful must retail for less than a full-scale invasion.”

  “Yorick here raises a good point—and besides, I don’t have a one of them left! The war does send a message to would-be challengers, I suppose, but it seems a bit much for that alone. And since enslaving a race of super-powered skeleton-men is bound to be more trouble than it’s worth, I’m out of reasonable explanations. But you may as well ask the man yourself. It’s not as if you’ll get a better opportunity for Q and A.”

  As the company drew near to the marble tower, they were met by a squadron of metal-men, this batch decidedly more streamlined than Tanner’s. Within the walls was a vision of Dead City squalor brought to foreign climes: the courtyard was buried in shattered blocks, fractured sculptures, and the remnants of any signs of culture that had fallen into the path of the Magnate’s men.

  Leopold stopped, holding a rotting hand to Jacob’s ribcage. “A moment before we go in, old spoon. This is—well, the end of the line for us, that’s clear enough.” He touched the metal rod that held up his head, seeming to search for the words. “Promise me you won’t tarry here when I’m gone, Jacob. I haven’t a notion where this quest of yours will end, but it’s not in this madhouse. The dust will never settle in White City,” he whispered, then strode ahead. Jacob could only follow behind, wondering at the queer discomfiture those words caused him.

  At the rear wall of the courtyard, crouched on a hillock of rubble, the Leather Masker incessantly rolled his dice. Near the rear of the room, the Magnate perched on a pile that aspired to the height of Southheap, peering down at the company with obvious amusement. From within the darkness of his cowl his iron mask gleamed, its surface covered in dents, scratches, and grooves. His legs were covered with jointed armor in similar disrepair, and his mail-covered hands held two skulls. The first, Althea’s, he held by the eye-socket, twirling it around one crooked finger; the second, carved from marble and wrested from atop an ancient statue, he held before his face, regarding its empty sockets with his own.

  “Forgive us,” he said. “We’ve been smiling at each other, we three, while we waited. I like the carving best. One almost expects it to speak.” He tossed it upside-down in his hand, working its articulated jaw and grunting out a greeting in City-Deadish. “Such craftsmanship. When all is said and done, I hope your sculptors will make a marble mask for my collection. They’ve had enough practice—half the sculptures we smashed were of skeletons. But that’s the trouble with artists. With all the imaginative power at your disposal, all you can think to make are self-portraits.”

  The Magnate pitched the marble skull down the front of the heap to smash on the floor amidst an avalanche of debris. Siham, though she saw Althea’s skull still dangling from his fingers, could not keep her dust-threads from humming, and the metal-men, hearing the threat, rolled between her and the Magnate, their bladed arms at the ready.

  The Magnate chuckled, tossing Althea’s skull from hand to hand. The Gambler joined him on the heap, squatting like a gargoyle on its side. “Eager little china doll, ain’t she?”

  “Indeed,” said the Magnate. “My dear, if you ever defect, do it in my direction. Though I seek to avoid armed conflicts as a rule, I must admit that this one, though unscheduled, has worked up my appetite. Think of how much value I’ve reassigned, and in so little time! Take these sculptures, for instance: what are they worth now that they’re so rare? And I’ve hardly begun on your most valuable possessions, namely these dusty ancients whose bits you revere at the cost of your own well-being.”

  “Cease this inflammatory rhetoric!” said Shailesh, letting out his wrists.

  “Ah, good, they’re makin’ demands,” muttered the Gambler, tossing his dice in the rubble, then scooping them up and trying again. “That always goes well.”

  “Regarding demands,” said the Magnate, strolling partway down the heap, “I find that they are most effective when stated as ultimatums; e.g.: ‘Cease this inflammatory rhetoric, or we will strenuously defend ourselves, taking great care not to cause you any bodily harm.’ Then again, that does lack a certain urgency, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t share their qualms,” said Siham, striding to the base of the heap. “I’d love to
get behind that mask of yours and do some carving of my own.”

  “I’ll bet you would,” said the Magnate, tossing Althea’s skull over his head and catching it by the jaw, “but if you were willing to sacrifice your elder to cut through us, you’d already be cutting.

  “So let’s drop the aggression! There’s no need to be so tense. This is a negotiation, after all: the sweet dessert at the end of our martial meal. You may resent my successes, but you must recognize that this conflict concerns nothing more than your ill-advised alliance with the Clock-Thief.”

  “There is no such alliance,” said Leopold, striding to the base of the heap.

  “Just a mo’,” shouted the Gambler. “Who’re you, then? No Boneman, that’s plain.”

  “I’m the one you call the Clock-Thief,” Leopold said with a low bow. “The other—the one you captured in the Plains—was but a decoy.”

  Magnate and Masker exchanged a pregnant glance. “I’m afraid that’s hardly enough proof to stop a siege,” said the former. “After all we’ve been through—”

  “After all you’ve been through,” said Leopold, “you ought to wonder what kind of man would turn himself in without guilt. Did my decoy offer himself freely? Did he leap to sacrifice himself in my place?”

  The Gambler scratched under his mask. “Bawled like a babby, more like.”

  Jacob nearly defended himself, then stopped. He was an anonymous skeleton to these people; no need to let them know who he was.

  “My ringer was convincing,” said Leopold, “only because he held the single attribute you were looking for. There would have been no point in protesting, considering your surety. And he succeeded in buying me the time I sought, though it did me little good in the end. But ask yourselves, gentlemen: is there any amount of credit that would buy the sort of sacrifice I’m offering you now? Only the genuine article would put his neck on the chopping-block.”

  This time, his captors didn’t argue. “It’s me you’ve sought all this while,” Leopold continued, “and I can assure you that the Seekers knew not what they guarded. Their contribution to this conflict amounts to nothing more than misguided chivalry run amok. By their logic, a criminal ought to find his own punishment in the wide-open space of eternity, like water finding its own level, or some such folderol—and they will defend to the point of their own ruin his right to do it.

  “They are pig-headed, I grant you, and their ceaseless dithering amounts to verbal water-torture, but they were ignorant of my theft when your armies arrived. Our relationship was nothing more than peripatetic happenstance: we stumbled into each other, and both parties are worse for the wear. Your argument is not with the Seekers, Magnate, but with Leopold l’Eclair. Trade me for the skull and punish me as you see fit.”

  “A Seeker abducted you—or your impostor, I s’pose—from my custody!” shouted the Gambler, spraying chunks of marble before him as he tumbled to the base of the heap. “May even ‘ave been this one, for all I can tell. She was right there, in the cell we’d prepared for you, laddybuck, which I call one coincidence too many.”

  “But a coincidence it was,” said Leopold. “My only goal in stealing your watches was to bank myself enough time to challenge your power, by any means I could devise; and because this was a fool’s errand, I shared nothing of it with those who crossed my path, not until they were too deeply entangled in my plans to extricate themselves. The men and women who surround me aren’t conspirators, they’re patsies. All the plans, all the crimes, were my own, and my neck alone should bear the brunt of justice.”

  “You ‘aven’t neck enough to bear our brand of justice, sunny Jim,” growled the Gambler. “You ‘aven’t just watches to answer for, but all we’ve done to recover ‘em. ‘Ave you the least notion of ‘ow many man-hours your chandelier-swingin’ ‘as cost? Can you even begin to reckon such gallopin’ quantities of time?”

  The Magnate’s fingers clacked to a rest on the brown surface of Althea’s skull. All eyes were on Leopold, and Leopold, as if their weight had driven him down, fell to his knees.

  “I cannot,” he said, “but I trust we can agree to round up.” His hands, which held so little flesh now that they were like gloves over the bones of his fingers, sought out the ragged skin around his neck and peeled his face from his skull. He bowed his forehead, showing the Magnate the lemniscate he’d carved as part of his ringer’s disguise: a figure-eight turned on its side, a twice-looping ribbon engraved in bone.

  “I can offer you nothing more than my future,” he said. “In exchange for the freedom of all whose company I’ve exploited, I offer eternity. Every hour of my existence is yours.”

  The Magnate paced slowly down the face of the heap. While the Gambler looked on like an actor whose last line had been spoken, he tossed Althea’s skull to Shailesh and pulled Leopold’s face from his trembling hands. “So be it,” said the Magnate. “Our men will depart White City within the hour.”

  “And what of the damage you’ve done?” said Ai.

  “Don’t be coy,” said the Magnate. “I’ve spent months spying on your men. Filling great expanses of time with activities of debatable utility is all you people do.”

  As the crow launched itself into the air, the metal-men closed around Leopold, withdrawing him so brusquely from the courtyard that he was shocked when, after they’d climbed over the scaffolds that joined White City’s walls to the Rim, they deposited him gently into a litter filled with cushions liberated from river-stained couches and bowed as they left him unguarded.

  “This is unexpected,” murmured Leopold, starting as the crow landed on the litter’s embroidered roof. Moments later, the Magnate climbed in, reclining so close to Leopold that a thrill of discomfort ran through him. “Now, that was elegant!” said the Magnate, and then the Gambler tumbled in after him. “Ta,” he grunted. A team of debtors lifted up the litter and began, slowly and evenly, to stalk through the human debris of the Plains.

  “I do appreciate a classy abdication,” said the Magnate, “especially after all we’ve been through lately. This one was the last of us to give up in style, and that was three hundred and sixty years ago now.”

  “Say it ain’t so!” growled the Gambler. “Feels like a fortnight.” Then he found the zipper at the back of his leather mask and slapped it onto the floor between their feet.

  Leopold stared. The skull before him bore the same marking as his own: the sideways symbol of infinity.

  “It’s just delightful to welcome someone to the team who instinctively understands the protocol,” said the Magnate, attempting to work his own mask free. “To have carved your own forehead with the loop-de-loop in advance! (We’ll have that touched up when we return, by the way: your lemniscate is a trifle lopsided.) Well, it’s just like I said before we invaded, ‘This Clock-Thief will bring us back to our roots, gentlemen! He has what we began with, and what we most need restored: panache.’”

  Leopold drew himself into a sitting position, cramming himself against the cushions on the far side of the litter, holding up a hand as if to brace himself against their revelations. “To welcome someone to the—”

  “To the team, yes! Why, do you mean to tell me that was in earnest? Oh, wonderful! Say, would you give me a hand here?” The Magnate leaned over to the Gambler, who helped him undo the straps at the back of his mask. “I beg you, don’t be offended; it’s just so—so refreshing to speak like this, on the level, with someone so—well, so fresh! Imagine that, the confession of guilt, the falling to your knees, the voluntary defacement: and all of it genuine! And here we thought the entire act was being submitted as a part of your resumé. Why, I’ll be asking to swap masks with you in no time; I don’t mind spoiling that secret.

  “But you don’t seem excited. Don’t tell me you’ve never wanted to play the Magnate? I thought that’s what all this song and dance was for. Here, try it on!” As the Gambler finally pried it free, the Magnate removed his metal mask and handed it to Leopold, who was so startled he immediate
ly dropped it to the floor, where it landed directly atop the leather one.

  “Uh-oh,” said both of his captors in unison.

  “Uh-oh?” said Leopold.

  “Well, look at us!”

  “Can you tell the difference?”

  “I can’t!”

  “Mix up our masks and we’re all in a muddle.”

  “Is he confused? I think he’s confused.”

  “He won’t be when he’s been around as long as we have!”

  The stillness that Leopold’s body achieved when they scooped up their masks lasted only a moment, replaced by a horrified trembling when he saw that they’d swapped them.

  “This is ‘ow it works, y’see,” growled the Gambler, who had only recently been the Magnate.

  “The only men we can possibly trust are long-time debtors,” proclaimed the Magnate, who’d just been speaking in the Gambler’s brogue. “All our highest-ranking staffers have given up as much time as we’ll let them. Only the men at the top are worthy of taking on the Infinite Debt: like you, Clock-Thief!”

  “And ‘ere,” said the Gambler, pulling a briefcase from beneath his seat, “is the new identify you’ve earned. We recommend you startin’ with what you’ve shown us already.”

  “Time will take care of the rest,” said the Magnate as the Gambler snapped open its clasps. “When enough years have passed, you’ll simply forget the difference between yourself and your mask. This effacement is inevitable, after a decade or two.”

  The Gambler turned the briefcase around to Leopold, who stared down at his new face: a plastic skull, stamped with carnival colors for the Day of the Dead.

  “Don’t be put out ‘cause it ain’t classical,” said the Gambler.

  “Quite right,” said the Magnate. “Plastic is ubiquitous, exciting, and all but immortal. The Gambler’s always having to replace his leather, but your mask will last forever, if we’re careful with it. Go ahead: try it on!”