by Jay Allan
"More like he put you in my care!" Ari shook free.
"Women," Tanner cursed.
Sword held before her, Ari strode under the portico and approached the main doors in a huff. She thrust out her hands and the doors swung open. Not locked, then. Why lock the doors when your mansion was surrounded by Direwalkers?
She strode inside and her footsteps echoed from the tile floor. She crossed a wide foyer. Set at intervals along it, candelabras illuminated tapestries and paintings of underwater scenes—schools of fish, coral reefs, an octopus at the heart of a dark cove.
Wary, she continued to advance, but met no further opposition. Strange. She glanced at Tanner, but he shrugged.
The rising chatter of some mayoral function came to her ears as she approached the reception hall. Ari recognized the colors of the city-state on the flags outside the entrance—three horizontal bars of green, red and white. A servant in white livery watched the door, but he fled inside when he spotted the gore-covered nightmare that was Ari.
She stepped unhindered into the lavish hall.
Marble pillars lined marble walls. Wooden planks crisscrossed the vaulted ceiling. Bright red ermine—white when she'd lived here previously—carpeted the floor. Rows of blackwood tables were set along the far side of the room. Tables not for sitting, but browsing, the counters overflowing with appetizers of all kinds. Honeybread from the west. Goat cheese from the south. Sweetmeats from the north.
Dressed in outrageous silks of every color imaginable, with jewelry dripping from fingers, ears, wrists, and necks, a hundred sycophants milled about the remaining space. They held plates of meat and cheese in one hand, glasses of wine in the other, and chatted amiably, almost oblivious to their surroundings.
She spotted Jeremy himself, at the center of the dinner party. He was like a king at court. He wore a suit of a style she'd never seen before. Black pants and black shoes. A ruffled white shirt, covered by a black jacket that tapered in the front. A piece of dark cloth dangled from the bronze bitch around his neck like some kind of noose.
The servant she'd seen at the entrance was whispering in Jeremy's ear, and the mayor shot an alarmed glance her way.
The chatter faded as Ari and her companions, swords dripping blood, approached. The carefree faces were replaced with looks of fear. Among them she spotted Uncle Briar, stuffing his mouth as usual. He froze when he saw her, and the piece of cake tumbled from his fingers, leaving lips framed in icing. The last time she'd seen the man was eight years ago, when she'd gone to visit her mother for the first time. That meeting hadn't gone well.
She looked from Briar, and at the periphery of her vision she saw him slump in relief.
The elaborately-dressed men and women parted, leaving her a clean path to Jeremy.
She stopped three paces from the man. Her blade was pointed at the ground, but she had more than enough time, and room, to deliver a killing blow.
She mustered all the icy sweetness she could, and said, "Am I interrupting your little dinner party, Jeremy?"
He merely stared. His gaze dropped to her sword.
"Don't worry, I'm not here to kill you." She smiled. "Where's your new wife?"
Jeremy abruptly returned her grin. He could play with the best of them. That was why he was mayor. "My new wife? Which one?" From his voice she could almost believe he was merry, till she saw the murder in those black, tilted eyes.
"Don't you look at me like that," she said.
Jeremy shook his head, as if he didn't understand. His eyes cast daggers the whole time, though he was still smiling.
Ari glanced at the fat nobles. "Tell your friends to leave."
He frowned. "Oh no." The thread-of-gold tentacles of the sea creatures that climbed the sleeves of his jacket glittered in the light. "I shan't do that. You see, now that you're here, well, you're going to be the night's main attraction! My dear, lovely, blood-covered Ari." His murderous gaze drifted over her shoulder.
Marks let out a yelp. Ari spun. A Direwalker had slunk up behind the group and clamped a bronze bitch just above Marks' fake collar.
She stepped toward the Direwalker, raising her sword, already reaching for the spark of vitra contained within the blade—
The floor came alive. The carpet stretched into fingers and wrapped around her ankles. She tripped.
More hands rose from the carpet. Some of those hands plucked the sword from her grip, others restrained her.
Beside her Tanner and Marks were similarly detained. They struggled helplessly against the carpet's iron grip.
The Direwalker who'd collared Marks came forward and bronze-bitched Ari and Tanner as a precaution, placing the bitches just above the fake collars they wore.
"Bring them to me," Jeremy said.
The carpet abruptly shifted, pushing upward until it became vaguely humanlike, those hands extending into arms that wrapped her tight. The carpet figures slid forward and in moments she stood before Jeremy, humiliated and defeated. Marks and Tanner squirmed beside her.
"I've made a few additions to my household since you were last here," Jeremy said.
The Direwalker came forward and, whispering something in his ear, handed Jeremy the swords.
Jeremy took the blades eagerly, and swung one about, testing its weight. The metal left trails of fire in the air. He turned toward the back of the room, which was empty, and swung the blade hard. Flame arced forth, scorching the far tapestries. Some of the dinner guests gasped.
"Lovely!" Jeremy said. "Though I'm collared, I can sense vitra again, through the blade. Marvelous. It makes me wonder: How easily can these take a man's head?" He met her eyes and stepped forward. "Or a woman's."
He held the tip of the blade to her throat.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The sword point kissed the hollow in Ari's neck and drew blood. Gols weren't supposed to feel pain the same way humans did, but she felt the blade's terrible heat well enough. Still, she refused to flinch. Not in front of Jeremy her archenemy. Not in front of Tanner and Marks.
She squeezed her jaw. This wasn't real, she reminded herself.
Then why the hell did it feel so real? She remembered what Hoodwink had said about dying in here.
Die, and you'll find yourself in the Outside. That way is a bit of a blow to the body though, and I don't suggest it. A lot of people die for real.
Die for real.
Jeremy pressed his lips together in disappointment, and lowered the blade. "Well, you could at least quake for me, darling. You always did have a cold heart though. And you were just as cold in bed. Well. What about if I take this one's head instead?"
He brought the blade to Tanner's neck.
She bit back the plea that formed at the back of her throat. She knew if she showed any sign of concern, any sign of weakness, Jeremy would gain the upper hand. First rule of politics: Never let your opponent gain the upper hand.
"Aha!" Jeremy said. "You care about him. I see it in your eyes."
Jeremy wouldn't kill him. Not with all his sycophants around.
"Kill him," she said. "He's nothing to me."
Please don't kill him. Please don't.
Jeremy cocked his head. "Really. Nothing."
Her eyes slid to Tanner. His jaw was clenched, and he stared at Jeremy with visible defiance. His skin was beginning to blister where the hot blade touched his neck, and she smelled the subtle hint of cooked meat.
She quickly looked back to Jeremy, at that smirking face of his, and again she felt the urge to beg. But she'd been trained in politics and manipulation. She could get the better of Jeremy. This was a game. The stakes were life and death, but it was still a game.
"When you're done playing with your new swords, Jeremy sweetheart, let me know," she said, thinking on her feet. "Because I've come to make a proposition."
Jeremy frowned, and then lowered the blade.
Good. Curiosity was the first step.
"You come inside my house," Jeremy said. "With swords swinging and f
aces bloodied, killing the men that guard my estate. And now you say you have a proposition? Surely there are better ways to introduce yourself?"
Yes, but I didn't expect you to have a carpet that could transform into a jailer.
Jeremy tapped the two swords together impatiently. "Well?" The blades arced flames when they touched. The threat was clear.
"I can teach you how to live forever," Ari said.
Jeremy studied her a moment, and one eyebrow climbed up his head. Then he burst out in raucous laughter.
He glanced at the sycophants around him. "She can teach me how to live forever!"
Stiff, nervous laughter erupted here and there among the onlookers. Uncle Briar laughed loudest, she noted.
"Ari, Ari, Ari," Jeremy said. "Even if it were true, and that's a big if, what makes you think I'd even be interested? Immortality. Pah! Who wants to live forever on this iceberg of dried shit?"
"Look at my face," Ari said. "Do you see a single wrinkle? Do you remember how I looked when I left you?"
He regarded her closely. "Hmm."
"Open my cloak," she said.
His brow furrowed suspiciously, but then he nodded to the nearby Direwalker. The gol came forward and ripped open her ermine cloak.
Jeremy gasped when he saw the numbers stamped there. He handed the Direwalker the fire swords, and he tried to slip his fingers under the collar of her shirt, but of course the cloth was melded to her flesh. "Impossible."
In answer, she merely looked at him. She had him now.
Jeremy marched over to Tanner and tore off his cloak as well. The number 1010 stood out plainly on his chest. "Gol as well. Also high ranking." Jeremy went to Marks and flung open the man's coat. "Just a User."
Jeremy strolled over to a rack of swords arrayed against one wall. She recognized his showcase pieces, a collection of fine blades he'd collected from cities all over the world during his trader years. "Immortality you say? As a gol?"
"Yes," she said.
Jeremy ran his fingers along the many hilts. Sometimes he'd pause to pick a sword from the rack and test its weight. "It is enticing, I must admit. Gols can't get sick. Physically, at least. And gols don't notice pain like ordinary men and women, or so it's said. I'd accept your offer, I really would. Except for one thing."
Jeremy picked out a sword and sauntered back to her side. "I'm not quite sure I want to be a gol. That whole mind plague business, you know. It quite turns me off to the prospect. And it's spreading faster than ever. Did you know I have to replace twenty of my pet Direwalkers each day because of it?" He rotated the blade in front of his eyes and light pinpricked the surface. A fine weapon—numerous gems inlaid the hilt, and silver-chased scrollwork etched the blade beneath the cutting edge. "You promise immortality, darling Ari, but your argument is seriously flawed. Because you see, gols can die."
He slammed the blade into the Direwalker's belly. The stunned gol dropped the fire swords, and looked down at the weapon impaling it. When the Direwalker looked up, its expression was all too human. Heartbroken. Filled with one question. Why?
Jeremy slid the weapon free, and an intestinal loop followed it in a spurt of blood. The Direwalker fell to its knees, vainly trying to hold back its insides, and collapsed, squirming. Blood pooled on the ermineskin, and Ari understood now why Jeremy had dyed the carpet red.
"Did you like how I gave him the other swords to hold?" Jeremy's voice was filled with malicious glee. His eyes didn't lift from the twitching body. "Politics. It's all about misdirection." Jeremy swung the blade down and cruelly severed its head. The body gave one final kick and then ceased all motion.
Jeremy looked up. He seemed to realize for the first time that his guests were fidgeting uncomfortably. "What? It's just a gol! He had the beginnings of the mind sickness anyway. Had to be replaced."
Jeremy raised a hand, and three Direwalkers stepped forward to replace the fallen one. "Take her and her friends to the Black Room. I'll deal with them shortly. And bring someone to clean up this mess!" Jeremy turned to his house guests, and segued into goodbyes and thanks-for-comings.
The carpet released Ari and her companions, and the Direwalkers brought her upstairs, disarmed, humiliated, and conquered, into the heart of the enemy's domain.
The enemy who had once been her husband.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Hands secured behind her back, Ari knelt with her companions in the center of the Black Room, so named for the paint that blackened floor, ceiling, and walls. Only the bronze brazier with its hot coals and the iron desk with its wicked instruments gave the room any color, malevolent though that color might be. The bronze candle lamps completed the disturbing scene.
Jeremy stood before her, his hands gloved, a long apron tied around his suit. The gloves and apron were, of course, black. Jeremy held a pair of dental forceps, and he smiled like a madman.
"You've never seen this room," Jeremy said. "I was always careful to hide it from you. It's my special room, the place I take certain bad people who've done certain bad things to me. For example, people who rush into my house and kill my guardsmen. Only I'm allowed to do that. You understand why I'm angry, don't you?"
"Oh, I know you're mad, that's for certain," Ari said.
His grin widened. "At least I'm not afraid to admit it. There's something to be said about a man elected by the people, a man who embraces his madness, for the people..."
"Elected?" She glanced at Tanner and Marks. "No one would ever vote for this sorry excuse of a man. He fixed all the elections."
Jeremy spread his arms in what Ari supposed was meant to be a gesture of apology, or conciliation. "Call me a perfectionist."
"I call you a liar," she said. "And a dictator."
"Come now Ari, why so harsh? After all I've done for you?"
She glanced at the forceps. "I wonder why."
"Oh, you need not fear, this isn't for you." Jeremy opened and closed the forceps. "At least not yet."
"Why are you creating an army of Direwalkers?" she said.
Jeremy slitted his dark eyes. "Maybe I like Direwalkers."
"What's next? Zombies? Werewolves?"
He shrugged. "This world is mine to do with as I please. It's been promised me."
"Promised? By who?"
Jeremy glanced at his Direwalker assistants, and nodded toward Tanner and Marks. "Hold them."
The Direwalkers restrained her and her friends, though all three of them had their hands tied behind their backs already.
"I've grown quite proficient in dentistry, did you know?" Jeremy studied the forceps. "Having a tooth pulled is one of the most excruciating experiences of the human condition. It's almost beyond the mind's pain threshold. When you pass that threshold, the brain turns on its defenses, and the person faints. But what happens when you turn off that preservation mechanism? When the mind can't faint to save itself from the pain?" He smiled. There was a twinkle in his eye. "Madness. Pure and utter."
He went to the desk, and retrieved a small vial. He approached Tanner and one of the Direwalkers forced her friend's mouth open.
"A little something to prevent you from fainting." Jeremy casually poured a third of the vial's contents into Tanner's mouth. He repeated the procedure with Marks. And her.
When it was done, she felt incredibly alert, and awake.
"Have you heard of the Schmidt pain index?" Jeremy said. "It's a rating of the agony inflicted by different hymenopteran stings. Kind of a grading scale for pain, as it were."
He strode to the iron desk, and opened a jar. "On the scale, which increases exponentially, zero rates as a pain that barely registers, like a kiss with a bit of a bite. At two, we have a familiar pain, such as a quick, rude pinprick. Having a tooth pulled rates a three, though for obvious reasons it's not included on the scale. The index maxes-out at four, the most painful level. Unfortunately, most of the insects included on the scale are now extinct. But I've managed to get my hands on a particularly resilient species that has survived in
the homes of the south."
He inserted the forceps into the jar and removed a squirming insect about the size of Ari's little finger. "Paraponera clavata. Also known as the bullet ant. The Schmidt pain index rates this little creature a four-plus. Yes. It's beyond the scale. The sting induces pure excruciation, concentrated on an area the size of a pencil-point. The affected body part exhibits a totally uncontrollable urge to shake, and throbs with pain for an entire day afterward. It's like walking over a firepit with a rusty nail grinding into your heel with each step. And that's from one sting. Imagine what twenty stings would do."
Jeremy approached Tanner, and the Direwalker assistant forced his mouth open.
The insect wriggled at the tip of the forceps. Its legs opened and closed, its mandibles snapped at the air, its stinger flexed and unflexed.
Tanner's eyes were focused, unbroken, on that insect, his face a mask of fear. Ari had seen raw terror on only a few people in her life, and seeing it now on her friend made a small part of her die inside. The innocent part.
Jeremy lifted the ant toward Tanner's open mouth—
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
"Stop it!" Ari said. "Stop!"
Jeremy lowered the ant. He looked at her blandly, as though she had ruined his fun. "Tell me how you became a gol, sweet Ari."
"I—" She shook her head. "You wouldn't believe it anyway."
Jeremy raised the ant once more—
"We crossed the Forever Gate," Ari said.
Tanner shook his head free of the Direwalker's grip. "Don't tell him a thing Ari!"
The Direwalker punched Tanner in the jaw, and forced his mouth open again.
Jeremy was facing Ari fully now. "Crossed the Gate, you say? And then what?"
"No, you don't understand," she said. "The Outside is a completely different world. We're actually on a moon, around Jupiter. On a crashed ship of some kind. And we're being attacked. We're trying to help the gols. We need the Control Room. The Box."