The Jack of Ruin

by Stephen Merlino

  Diving under a table, Harric skinned his knee. The women surrounded Brolli, voices loud and chittering like squirrels. Fink skittered over from an adjacent table and hugged Harric’s leg. As a Kwendi prentice passed, the imp’s talons flicked out like a striking snake and hooked a brilliant strand of spirit. The strand whipped into his mouth and disappeared down his throat like he’d sucked up a noodle. She kept walking, but slapped at her hip where the strand had been attached, as if swatting a biting insect.

  “Fink!” Harric gasped. “What are you doing?”

  “Feeding myself. What the souls you think I’m doing?” Fink spat, white eyes glaring like taut boils. “I’m starving.”

  “You can’t just do that.”

  “Oh? Then can I feed off your strands? I have to eat something.”

  The viciousness in his tone took Harric aback.

  “Or maybe you’ll kill a Kwendi for me?” Fink said. “You have to feed me—you said you would, but now look at me! You’re burning me up like a tallow candle. I’m ribs.”

  The imp’s gauntness was shocking. He was skin and bones. Harric had seen starved children that looked better. The imp seemed dried up. Mummified.

  Fink’s eyes gleamed with hatred—or desperation. “We have to go. Now. Or you have to feed me on your strands. It can’t wait.”

  Harric’s mouth moved without sound. He swallowed. “Ah—I—my strands?”

  “They grow back. They always grow back. And it’s that or I die, and without me, you die.”

  Harric felt the weight of the Unseen flicker above him, pressing on his shoulders and then releasing, as if Fink were losing strength. And whether or not the imp had purposefully manipulated the burden to persuade Harric, Fink’s gaunt frame said it all. He wasn’t faking this.

  “I understand,” Harric said. “But I don’t want you feeding off anyone else. This was my choice. No one else pays for it.”

  Harric swept his arm under Fink’s nose and steeled himself. One of the bright strands rising from his arm swirled and curled before the imp’s eye like a weightless ribbon of sugar taffy. Talons flashed, and Fink sucked it in his needled jaws. Desperate greed flashed in his expression as he swallowed, and his gaunt face swelled. The entire strand—many fathoms of glowing ribbon—whipped down from the sky into Fink, and Harric watched as flesh poured over Fink’s ribs and filled the hollow of his belly. As the end of the strand whipped into his mouth, the root tugged from Harric’s arm like a plucked feather.

  The imp gasped and closed his eyes, and Harric fought back a wave of nausea.

  Before the imp could ask for more, Harric ducked out from under the table and climbed on top. His arm stung where the strand had been, and already it swelled like a circular burn. As he rubbed it, his heart thumped hard behind his breastbone. He had no idea how long it took for strands to grow back, or what would happen if he died before it could. Spirit strands were what lifted a soul to the Unseen Moon when it left its body. They were like wings that way. If he lost one, would he still have enough to lift him? He had no idea how many it would take to lift a soul, or how many he could spare and still rise.

  He took a deep, shuddering breath. The welt began to pucker as he rubbed it, like the bump from a plucked feather, or a nipple.

  The thought froze him in place. His mouth hung open as he studied the lesion.

  It’s a Witch’s Teat.

  He’d seen marks like it on some of the witches they’d hung in Gallows Ferry. Witch hunters claimed it was an identifying mark. They claimed it was the site on the witch where her familiar nursed from her.

  Now he knew it was true. And he wished he’d chosen a less obvious spot than his forearm.

  I know ten words for “looting” and each one is music to me.

  —Jack-a-Knave, in “Sir Willard & the Treasure Fair”

  57

  Stranded

  As Harric watched Brolli swing away toward the partitioned trellis where they’d taken the injured matrons, a realization hit him hard enough to pierce his worries.

  The injured matrons.

  It was a realization of opportunity. A recognition that he could be saboteur as well as spy.

  Climbing down from the table, he beckoned Fink to follow, but Fink merely stared at him. His eyes were no longer wild, but Harric could still see anger in them. The imp shook his head, eyes narrowed.

  Harric held out a hand. “Then I need the nexus. I’ll just be a minute.”

  After a moment, Fink extended his trembling hand and laid the stone in Harric’s. “I can’t hold you in the Unseen when you leave me here.”

  “I know, but I have to try.”

  “Keep away from Web Strands. If one attaches, don’t move. I’ll find you.”

  Even as Fink said it, one of the glowing strings quested toward Harric from the trellis above.

  He gave Fink a nod and left, quickly outdistancing the strand. Fink still carried the weight of the Unseen for him, but Harric steeled himself for the moment he got too far from the imp and the weight fell fully on his shoulders. He’d closed half the distance to his destination when it crushed down on him and he realized he might only last a minute.

  Discarding stealth, he stumbled into a run to close the distance quickly and dove behind the heavy partitions. He found himself in what appeared to be a rest area, judging by the many the whispered conversations of women there. Many enclosed pavilions floated in the branches above, but there were also a few round and slightly bowl-shaped nests of blankets underneath them on the ground. Among these beds, Harric found Brolli sitting and conversing in hushed tones with a black-haired matron and a half-dozen of the younger women. In the Unseen, the Kwendi’s pale green strands bent into the floor, but a single bright blue strand rose from the matron’s breast. It took Harric a moment to realize it was a Web Strand, and that the thing had latched on to the hoop around her neck.

  Harric stared, his head aching with the weight of the Unseen, his mind spinning.

  So the loops were like a nexus. That meant this matron must craft Unseen magic, like the wedding ring on Caris’s finger, and that her hoop attracted Web Strands like Harric’s nexus. It seemed obvious now that the black marbling in the hoops must be of the same material as the nexus stone in his hand. He shook his head in amazement. If that were so, then the red marbling must be of the Mad Moon, and the white of the Bright Mother. Did that mean the Kwendi had stolen nexuses from the moons? And if so, how had they melted and marbled them together?

  Creeping closer, Harric saw that Brolli and the others sat vigil beside the injured matrons’ beds, and that both were already fast asleep. Heavy fur blankets had been drawn up to the matrons’ armpits. Their long arms rested outside the blankets, and each rested a long-fingered hand on their strange, marbled hoops.

  Jackpot.

  Harric had just stopped between the beds of the two matrons when his head gave a vicious throb, and his vision darkened as it had before he’d collapsed on the Kwendi lovers.

  Cobbing moons, not now!

  He dropped to his belly and pushed past the overhanging blankets into the space under one of the matrons’ beds, only to find that Kwendi beds did not have legs like Arkendian beds, but stood on a kind of pedestal, which left only a rim around the edges in which to hide. Cursing, he curved his body around the pedestal as best he could, but his head and shoulders were just inside the rim of overhanging blankets.

  It was insane. He was trapped, and they would find him easily.

  As his vision faded, he released himself into the Seen, and everything went dark.

  It took him a moment to realize he hadn’t passed out again, but that it was simply very dark in the Seen under the bed. He held still, listening as Brolli spoke in low tones, performing one of his small miracles of morale and apparently captivating the circle of women.

  Harric closed his eyes and allowed his breathing and heartbeat to settle.

  Now what, genius?

  Arching his neck, he peeked through his o
culus from under the curtain of blankets. The Kwendi women still sat with their backs to him. He could just see the bottoms of their cushions and a few of their feet between them. He could not see Brolli.

  The injured matron on the bed above Harric murmured and moved so the ropes supporting the mattress creaked and nudged his shoulder. Brolli stopped speaking for a moment, and one of the Kwendi women rose and knuckle-walked to the bed until her foot stopped inches from Harric’s face. The ropes creaked and bumped his shoulder again as the woman attended to the matron, murmuring comforting words.

  The matron settled, but then the attendant set about tucking up the edge of the blanket where it draped over the edge of the bed.

  No! Go away! Leave the blankets!

  The curtains lifted on Harric’s legs, and if she stepped back, she’d easily see him. In seconds, she would tuck up the blankets before his face, exposing him to Brolli and the others.

  Absurd possibilities flashed through Harric’s mind. He could pin the tail of the blanket to the ground so she couldn’t lift it. He could grab her foot and hope she thought it a rat or a prank by one of the others. He could push upward against the mattress to lift the resting matron and then drop her suddenly so she appeared to convulse.

  That might work.

  He’d just set his shoulder against the mattress for this last plan when another glowing foot dropped before his face. Only this time, it wasn’t a foot. The blind, blunt end of a Web Strand quested along the edge of the bed like a fat and lazy glowworm.

  Harric thrust his nexus into the strand and dove through his oculus just as the attendant pulled up the furs before his face. For an instant, the Unseen crushed him like a bug beneath a boot, then the pressure vanished and he felt as light as cork in water. The Web Strand hummed, sending a vibration like a thousand singing voices through his being. He let out a long, quiet sigh of relief, and watched as the attendant tucked the last of the blanket and gave Harric a full view of Brolli and the others.

  Moons, I love the Unseen.

  But now he had a Web Strand stuck to his nexus, and he did not know how to detach it.

  No matter. He’d deal with that later.

  Crawling out from under the bed, he knelt on the mattress beside the matron and examined the position of her hoop. As luck would have it, her hand had slipped from it, but he could not see an easy way to lift the cord from her neck and around all her braids without waking her. If he’d brought his purse knife, it would be easy, but he’d left it with his shirt back in the map room. Then he noticed a missing segment in the leather cord. Peering closer, he realized it was a witch-silver clasp, which appeared as a black gap in the Unseen.

  Identifying it by touch, he unfastened it and slipped the cord from the loop. Then he waited until a moment when it seemed Brolli had fully occupied the attention of the attendants gathered around him, and lifted the hoop from the blankets.

  Harric wasn’t sure how much the hoop would add to the burden of holding him in the Unseen—or if Fink would notice it when he took over—but the Web Strand gave no sign of strain when he lifted it into the Unseen and stuffed it in his pack. The empty cord ends that lay on the matron’s chest screamed of the theft, so he tucked them under the blankets in such a way that, at first glance, it would look like the hoop had been tucked underneath.

  This process he repeated with the second matron, and if anyone noticed the blankets moving, they said nothing, probably assuming the matrons simply moved in their sleep.

  Standing off a bit, he gave each matron a courtly bow. Apologies, good ladies, but these trinkets will prove useful one way or another. Plus, I have a love charm to remove, and these may prove useful bargaining chips.

  The Web Strand still clung like a leech to his nexus, radiant, light as air, and humming brightly. On second thought, he was the leech, drawing off its energy. And if that were the case, there must be a way for him to “un-bite” the strand, only he could not imagine how. He tried to shake it free, but only managed to send whipping vibrations up its length.

  Oops.

  Well, the matrons couldn’t see what effect they had on the strands, so they must walk around all the time with the things dragging behind. Surely if he dragged it down the hall, it would look like trade as usual among the matrons.

  Surely.

  He hoped.

  Pushing his way through the partitions, he left the scene before someone could notice the missing hoops, and dragged the Web Strand with him. As soon as he had a view of the hall, he climbed a table and scanned for Fink. The imp was easy to spot, waving his hands wildly and gesturing for Harric to stay where he was.

  “Sorry,” Harric whispered, when the imp crow-hopped up to his side. “I had no choice.”

  Fink snatched the nexus and detached the strand. “You want to bring the Aerie to us?”

  A low boom shuddered through the place and resonated through the hall. It was like the sound of a giant’s tread above, and its vibration rattled the shelves and shivered the trellises.

  Every Kwendi in the room stopped moving and talking and exchanged startled looks.

  Fink’s eyes widened to the point where Harric wondered if they’d fall from his skull. Snatching Harric’s hand in his, Fink began dragging him toward the exit.

  “I get it, we’re leaving. Stop and get on my pack and we’ll move faster.”

  They found Mima at the foot of the ramp, conversing in serious tones with several other matrons. Two of these she sent hurrying up the ramp as Brolli descended a trellis beside her.

  Brolli spoke with her then pulled an hourglass from his satchel and winced. Mima said something in Kwendi and pointed him to the door. For an instant, their gazes met and a grim look passed between them, then he leapt into the trellis and fled the way he’d come, Harric hurrying beneath him.

  …in governance, Arkendians are not a rational people. Their kings are hated by many they rule. Worse, they are succeeded in power by heredity of the eldest male, not election…even when the eldest male is a well-known fool, incompetent, cruel, or insane. This method is sacred, and the very people who suffer by it defend it with their lives.

  —From Notes on Stilty Governance, written in Kwendi, by Second Ambassador Chombi

  58

  Locked & Barred

  Harric followed as Brolli swung without pause through the complex of upper corridors. He now stuck to the highest of trellises, which were used by fewer Kwendi. The few Kwendi he met moved at top speed, faces anxious and set, and did not stop to speak. Periodically, the deep, booming vibration would repeat itself somewhere in the complex, seeming louder with each repetition.

  It soon became clear to Harric that Brolli was not returning by the same route back to the upper floors that he had taken to come down. On this new path, he passed living quarters with great halls, and several of the corridors they passed breathed cool night air on Harric’s perspiring skin. This perplexed him at first, for how could there be open windows or doors to the outside if they were underground? But then it occurred to him that what he had imagined basements or subterranean floors might abut a cliff face where windows and balconies could look out from the side of the mountain, over valleys.

  Brolli entered none of these, following a path that took him higher in the complex and clearly in one direction. When they’d risen several steep ramps to the point that Harric guessed they must be very near the floor on which they’d started, a commotion stopped Brolli short. Swinging up to an archway, Brolli peered into a courtyard from which fresh night air poured into the corridor. Whatever he saw beyond made him curse and retreat from the archway. Hanging by one hand, he checked again the sandglass in his satchel, cursed once more, and turned back the way he’d come.

  Harric risked a peek through the arch before following, and saw a courtyard like the one in which Brolli had given his speech to the crowd. The commotion came from Kwendi merchants hurriedly packing their wares and hurrying away from three huge, owl-faced Aerie, which perched upon the trellises
only thirty paces away.

  “Kid! He’s getting away!” Fink tugged on Harric’s pack straps.

  “Keep an eye on him,” Harric whispered.

  Harric withdrew before Fink could see the Aerie, and was about to follow Brolli when he heard a whistling tone from a Kwendi near the archway, and he froze.

  Unless there was another whistling Kwendi, the two in the cistern had escaped.

  “He went that way!” Fink said, pointing after Brolli. “Catch him!”

  Barely hearing the imp, Harric peered around the corner again, and saw two Kwendi—a male and a female—accompanied by a half-dozen of the black-clad warriors in toad hats, who brought them before the Aerie. The female’s braids were plastered to her face, soaking wet, and the male spoke urgently in whistling tones.

  Harric pulled his head back and bolted after Brolli.

  Brolli had picked up his pace, but Harric caught up to him easily because he knew where he was now: the courtyard was the same where Brolli gave his speech, and the path he took now simply skirted around it to avoid the toad hats.

  “You almost lost him,” Fink said. “What were you looking at?”

  “What do you think?” Harric said.

  Before they reached the corridor leading to the map room, Harric saw several more detachments of the black-armored guards moving purposefully down hallways and ushering Kwendi from the main corridors. But Brolli had already slipped the net, and Harric, unseen, passed easily beneath the trellises.

  Harric could not fathom how the couple had escaped the reservoir. Maybe an Aerie followed their strands back to the spot. It was, of course, possible that they’d simply found a way to build a ladder with the blankets and bits of wood that had fallen into the water. He could hear his mother’s mockery in his mind. Take pity on an enemy at your own peril.