by Craig Askham
“You’d better come with me,” said GI Joe. “You’re not going to have much time to prepare.” He turned on his heel and stomped off without waiting to see if Rafferty followed. Struggling somewhat in his ridiculous armour, Rafferty tried to keep up. Despite working here for six months, he still needed a guide just to make it out of the building. At a push, he thought he could probably just about navigate his way out; if he was being chased by an army of gamers looking to kill a famous demon hunter, for example. But the truth was that he just wasn’t an observant person. There were some things his brain couldn’t store, like directions. With the invention of self driving cars back on Earth, knowing how to get to places was slowly becoming null and void. Much better to sit back, relax, and trust technology to get you places.
“Any chance you could slow down a bit?”
The long-haired soldier ignored him. His footsteps rang out on the stone floor, so much so that Rafferty started to wonder how he’d cope if one of his superiors suddenly asked him to creep up silently on somebody. When they eventually emerged into the street, he saw that the sun had already set. He was annoyed, as he would have been here to see it if not for having to spend so long squeezing into his dragon armour. When he’d taken the job, he’d been living in Santa Cruz. The commute from his modest condo to the Stillwater building in Los Angeles didn’t take long, but the portal there was a direct link to Arunkumar; an instant journey from morning in LA to night in the Aneiri capital. He couldn’t think of anything worse than putting his body clock through such a daily upheaval, waking up in the morning and heading straight for a night shift, so he’d given up the condo and returned home to London instead. London to Sheniwar wasn’t quite like for like, but it had seemed as near as he was going to get. Nobody had told him, though, that Earth and Vangura were not the same size; if he’d stayed in LA, eventually the rotations of the two planets would have led to the kind of like-for-like shift pattern he’d been hoping for, if only for a while. As such, his current night shift involved getting to the London portal in the afternoon, and usually allowed him to arrive in Sheniwar in time to watch the sun go down, which was the highlight of most of his days. After a shift usually spent in sawdust-floored taverns, drinking mead as Hachiko the bard and supposedly keeping a watchful eye on his allotted gamers, he could usually time it so that he left Sheniwar after sunrise and arrived at one of the posh London bars in time to spend a few extra night hours topping up his drink levels with cocktails and shots. Without doubt, as long as the alcohol didn’t end up serving as a gateway back to hard drugs, this was the best job he’d ever had. Until now, of course. This new gig sounded like it had the potential to make him stretch his acting muscles, and he wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that, especially if he had to do it sober. Unless, of course, Varun Behl kept a stash of Shadziri feijen in his little temple. To be fair, Varun Behl sounded like the kind of miscreant who bathed in feijen, so maybe the promotion from bard to demon hunter might not be as bad as he first thought. Fingers crossed, because my body isn’t going to appreciate an unexpectedly dry night.
What his body did appreciate, however, was the taste of warm evening air. It was beautiful, it was safe, and it smelled more than a little of human excrement. It didn’t really matter; he inhaled as big a lungful as he could manage through his nose, and blew it back out again from his mouth as if he was trying to get high. GI Joe paused to let him take those first couple of breaths. It was an unwritten Stillwater rule, given the state of the air back home, that anybody setting foot outside for the first time after having stepped through a portal, be afforded a moment to fully appreciate the beauty of breathing without a mask. GI Joe clearly didn’t think too highly of Rafferty, but he was at least decent enough to show him this small courtesy. Rafferty, of course, took the moment a step too far; after a fifth deep breath with his eyes closed, he caused the other man to purse his lips and shake his head, then simply walk away again. Grinning, Rafferty set off down the street after him. The cobbles were crooked and uneven beneath his feet, but in this armour he felt like his extra weight could simply flatten them. Being deep in the heart of the merchant quarter meant they didn’t have to stick too much to the shadows, as there weren’t many people about at this time of the evening that might see them. Even so, Rafferty had learned enough during his time here to know that, should they hear anybody coming, diving into the nearest alleyway was the answer. As Hachiko, there was no need for such drastic measures; however, the sight of an imposing knight striding down the street, wearing full dragon armour, might just garner the kind of attention they could do without. Causing the general public to wet themselves in fright, and to subsequently tell all their friends that Varun Behl was stalking the city at night, wasn’t the best way for Stillwater to remain under the radar. Not to mention the fear that the real demon hunter might somehow catch wind of what they were up to, and come looking to make an example of his imposter.
GI Joe stopped abruptly, holding up a fist to signal Rafferty to stop and assuming that he would be paying attention. Rafferty nearly walked into him. Joe stood there like a statue, fist still raised, listening. Rafferty held his breath, and strained his ears to hear. It took a few moments to block out the sounds of the city, such as they were. Crickets, mostly, and the distant sound of waves. A few merchants lived above their shops, but mostly the area only came alive during the day, busy until the night market in the city centre took over. It was by no means deserted, but the lack of housing and the long walk to the night market meant that the taverns closed at the same time as the shops, and the lack of taverns meant a lack of people. Apart from a sprinkling of bored guards, of course; hired by paranoid shopkeepers who didn’t dare leave their wares protected by mere metal locks and magical wards, even though the wards alone were more than adequate to thwart the immoral intentions of most. And if someone wanted to gain entrance to a shop so badly that they were willing to employ a shady wizard to disentangle those wards, then a handful of former soldiers and retired watchmen well past their prime were going to do very little to stop them.
“Back!” hissed GI Joe, and Rafferty had the good sense to do as he was told immediately. They’d just passed a narrow alleyway, so he took three large backward steps until he was at the opening and then darted in. His guide was just over a second behind. They stood together in silence as they waited for whoever was coming to reach them and, with any luck, walk straight past. The sound of voices reached them before anything else.
“I swear to you, lad, I’m not making it up!” The voice was jovial, and possibly too young to belong to a private guard. “She’s as thick as two short planks. It’s why I love her!”
“I’m not having it, Ditmas.” The other man’s voice sounded just as young, and way too loud for a part of the city that seemed to be trying to sleep. “You’re trying to tell me that your wife, who makes the nicest chicken stew I’ve ever tasted and only lets you near her on your birthday and special occasions…don’t interrupt me now, you told me this last year with your own stupid mouth…”
“Now hold on a minute, Durler.” The first man sounded aggrieved, and they both seemed to be nearly on top of them. “What’s her chicken stew got to do with anything? Making a decent chicken stew is by no means an accurate yardstick with which to measure how clever she is, you fool. And how, pray tell, are you able to recall a conversation that we supposedly had the gods only know when, that pertains to the number of times I may or may not lay with my wife in any given year? I put it to you, sir, that you’re an idiot.”
The second man sighed.
“I need to take a leak,” he said. “This alley will do.”
“There’s no time for toilet breaks, you tiny-bladdered oaf. Lapworth says we have to check out this warehouse, and he’s an even bigger idiot than you are. Neither of us have got the slightest clue where we’re going, but we both know full well that he’ll know we’re lying if we say we’ve checked it when we haven’t. The sooner we get it done and get back, the sooner
we can get down The Salt Mill and wet the baby’s head. So tie a knot in it and keep moving.”
Rafferty held his breath. He wanted to move further into the alley, but knew the creaking of his armour would give away their presence if he so much as moved a finger. These men definitely weren’t guards; they were under orders from their superior, which suggested they were officers of the City Watch. Of all the bad luck.
“Fine.” The second man sounded less than pleased and, despite his reluctant acquiescence, neither seemed to make any attempt to actually move along. “But if I end up watering my breeches, you’ll be drinking alone tonight.”
“That’s probably for the best anyway, Durler.” Heels scraped across the cobbles as two boots moved lazily away. They were followed by two more, but without so much scraping this time. “It’s not like you’d believe a word I said.”
“Ah now, don’t be like that, Ditmas. Frida’s a sweet girl, and she’s just given you a beautiful son. There’s no way she’d be stupid enough to say that to the midwife, and you shouldn’t be making such disgusting jokes about her, if I’m being honest. It’s disrespectful.”
The voices started to fade as the Watchmen moved further away. Ditmas might have mumbled something about Durler not being any fun, but Rafferty couldn’t be sure. When he thought it was safe to do so, he glanced in GI Joe’s direction and then moved cautiously back out into the street. Two backs were almost out of view, thankfully headed in the opposite direction to themselves. One of the Watchmen was significantly bigger than the other, and he found himself wondering which one was Durler and which one was Ditmas.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“If you must.” GI Joe sounded less than interested, but Rafferty ploughed on regardless.
“What the hell did Frida say to that midwife?”
Five
Yooku Sangari stepped outside, tilted her head, and sniffed so hard that she snorted. She glanced around to make sure nobody was around to notice, and then sniffed again, this time with slightly less violence. Wasn’t this supposed to calm her down? The sky was bright with a billion stars, and she was fairly certain none of them was Earth. The thought didn’t calm her any more than the deep breaths had; somewhere out there, in the vastness of space, was a planet she called home. Her children were on it, probably getting ready for bed, and they were going to need her to make breakfast for them in the morning. If she could just pinpoint which star was hers, maybe give her a frame of reference, then at least she’d have something to aim for instead of being at the wrong end of a severe mind-boggling. There had to be an easier way to earn a living.
The identical moons had positioned themselves one in front of the other; they had names, but Yooku couldn’t remember what they were. Truth be told, she couldn’t think much past her desire for a cigarette. A real one, complete with nicotine and tar, although one of those nasty ones from a 3D printer would do. She wasn’t addicted, she just needed to calm her nerves. The air on this planet was so damn clean that she just wanted to pollute it with a few poorly executed smoke rings.
“Yooku?” A small head poked through the doorway. “Ah, there you are.” Jida Alakija grinned at her, and proceeded to push non-existent glasses up her nose. Bless her, she wasn’t coping well with the contact lenses. There were no such things as spectacles on this planet, though, so she was forced to go without. She’d made the assumption that she’d found Yooku but, for all she knew, she could actually have just started a conversation with a Murtazi pirate.
“I literally stepped out ten seconds ago, Jida. What could possibly have happened in ten seconds that required you to come find me?” Jida Alakija. Where the hell had she come up with that? Her parents had named her Susan once upon a time, and to Yooku she would always be Susan. Jida Alakija didn’t sound real, but then that was probably the point. When coming up with a Vanguran name for work purposes, the only thing that really constrained anybody was their imagination. Yooku didn’t have much of an imagination, and had ended up just stealing the name Yooku Sangari from an African director she’d worked with over a decade ago. She had no idea why the name had stuck in her head for so long, other than the fact that Yooku sounded like Count Dooku from Star Wars. He was from Ghana, if her memory served her correctly, and had a habit of nodding off in his chair a dozen times a day, often in the middle of a scene he was supposed to be directing. Drove her mad, the lazy sonofabitch.
“You didn’t tell me you were stepping out.”
“Didn’t realise I was supposed to.”
“I was worried.”
“You mean you didn’t want to be left in charge.”
“That too.”
Yooku sighed. Ten seconds to herself, and she’d wasted them looking for Earth and thinking about a cigarette. If only she could have her time again…
“Right, then.” She clapped her hands together as she spoke, and Jida jumped in fright. Her eyes seemed too small for her head, but that was probably just because the lenses of her glasses usually magnified them to epic proportions. She was probably in her late twenties, but the combination of her short black hair and fine moustache made her look like a thirteen year old boy. “Let’s get back to it, shall we?”
Aware that Jida was probably resting her weight on the door handle so that she only had to poke her head outside, Yooku reached for the handle on her side and pulled it quickly enough that her pesky subordinate lost her balance and fell forward. Regretting her childish behaviour immediately, she reached out with her free hand and steadied her. Before she could apologise, Jida beat her to it.
“I’m so sorry, Yooku. Incredibly clumsy of me.”
Yooku smiled in spite of herself. Nobody could stay angry with Jida Alakija, she was too damn nice. She gave her shoulder a squeeze.
“It was my fault, Susan.” Jida’s eyes went wide at Yooku’s forbidden use of her real name, which ironically only made them look normal-sized. Before she ended up on the receiving end of a stern telling off, Yooku side-stepped her and hurried back inside the warehouse, pausing only to pick up the lantern she’d placed on the floor before going outside. She heard Jida scurrying along behind her, and lengthened her already long stride in an attempt to lose her. No such luck. Yooku may have been tall, but her assistant was determined.
“Yooku, you really shouldn’t call me that. If one of the locals heard…” She left the implication unspoken. Yooku made her way through the maze of offices and smaller rooms, most of them not even lit. The cobwebs had been cleared when Stillwater purchased the building, but that was about it. Stillwater wasn’t particularly interested in the offices and back rooms, just the large open space in front of them. As such, rolls of abandoned silk worth thousands of Aneiri duskets gathered dust and provided soft barriers for people to walk into.
“If one of the locals heard…?” she repeated, voice going up at the end to turn it into a question. She looked around, as if expecting one of the locals to spring from behind a roll of silk, waving their very best jazz hands. “What would they think, Jida? I’ll tell you what they’d think. They’d think ooh, that little Shadziri woman has a funny sounding name, and then do you know what they’d think after that? Yes, Jida, they’d think never mind the funny sounding name, what in the name of all the gods am I doing in a dark warehouse in the middle of the merchant quarter, at night, surrounded by a bunch of scantily clad women and a small army of shaven-headed men wearing robes and carrying incredibly sharp knives? You know what, Jida? I think they’d run to find the nearest City Watchman, and tell him one of two things. You want me to tell you what those two things are?”
Behind her, Yooku heard a sigh. She grinned, grateful that Jida couldn’t see how much fun she was suddenly having. It was good to rant. It helped with the stress of the job, to be able to stick two fingers up at the Stillwater managers who came up with these stupid rules on a daily basis.
“I don’t think I could stop you now, Yooku, could I?” She sounded like she wished she’d kept her mouth shut. “Carry
on, if it helps.”
They rounded a corner and emerged into the main warehouse space. There were dozens of sconces along the walls, each one with a torch that bore a naked, flickering flame and created a shadowy, foreboding atmosphere. Where there were no torches, dark red fabric had been attached to the walls in order to disguise the utilitarian look of the place, and instead create the seductive ambience of a prostitute’s boudoir. People milled in small groups and chatted amongst themselves while they waited, and they were all dressed as Yooku had just described to Jida. Some read lines from thin parchment, as if they were rehearsing a play. Others threatened nobody in particular with their knives, brandishing them as if they knew how to use them. Yooku pulled up just short of entering the space, and turned to face Jida.
“Option one,” she said, holding up one finger. “The local in question runs up to the afore-mentioned Watchman, scared out of his tiny little mind. He tells the Watchman that Varun Behl, the infamous demon hunter, has taken over a warehouse in the middle of the merchant district with a bunch of his acolytes. From this makeshift temple, or lair if you like, they plan on taking over the world. There’s violence and there’s debauchery, maybe even a little bit of sodomy for good measure. There’s blood and there’s death, and there’s feeding on souls. There’s generally some terrible, end-of-the-world stuff going on. You still with me, Jida?”