by D. P. Prior
“Laddie,” Nameless said, “you overthink things. The way I see it, a shogger messes with me, my family, my friends, and I bloody his nose. He does it again, and he gets to wear my axe as skull jewelry.”
“Nature red in tooth and claw,” Aristodeus mumbled. “A dog eat dog world, where only the strong survive.”
“You think it isn’t like that?” Nameless said.
“I hope it isn’t.”
Nameless glanced through the eye-slit at the slowly emptying bag that was feeding him.
“A little longer,” Aristodeus said, “and then we’ll join the others at Dougan’s Diner. Hopefully, Shader will have some good news.”
“You think the Senate will listen to him?”
“More than they ever listened to me.” Aristodeus’s eyes widened with sudden realization. He slapped himself on the forehead three times in quick succession. “He’s Nousian. You stupid idiot, Aristodeus. He’s… No, wait, it’s Wayists the Senate have outlawed. But the symbols are similar, and the red on white…”
“Something you want to share with me?” Nameless said.
“Oh, it’s probably nothing. The Senate of New Londdyr are paranoid about Sektis Gandaw. Years ago, they thought they could appease him by outlawing religion: specifically the religion of the Wayists.”
“So, Shader’s in trouble?”
“Not necessarily,” Aristodeus said. “The symbol on his surcoat, the Nousian Monas, is different to the Wayists’ red cross above a triangle. I’m sure they’ll see that. And if not, Shader can handle himself. In that, he’s not dissimilar to you. There are few, if any, better with a sword.”
“So, you don’t really need me, laddie. Shader has it all: brains, from what I’ve seen, holiness, and he can fight with the best of them.”
Aristodeus closed his eyes and clasped his hands over his mouth. “Exactly what I thought. What I planned. But now, I’m not so sure. On Urddynoor, there was a battle to determine the fate of the worlds. A battle for the last piece of the Statue of Eingana. Everything was thrown into that fight, and finally Shader had a chance to kill Sektis Gandaw, but he froze. He froze, and that’s why he had to come here, with Shadrak and Rhiannon. One last desperate bid to prevent the Unweaving.”
“And who are they, Shadrak and Rhiannon? I mean, I’ve worked out the midget’s a nasty piece of work, though good at what he does, but Rhiannon… I thought I detected bad blood between her and Shader.”
“Rhiannon is a nobody. There was once something between her and Shader, but that relationship was… discouraged. After that, she tried to be a priestess of the Templum, but she was never really suited to the life. Between you and me, she’s got issues.”
“Laddie,” Nameless said, “that’s more than I was wanting to know. My concern is how she fits into this plan of yours. Can she fight?”
“She can now.”
“What’s that supposed to mean.”
“She’s my back-up plan. Or rather, my second back-up. You are my first. Shader is our best hope, of that I am certain, but if he fails, if he freezes up again, I need you to step in. What can’t be achieved by painstaking preparation might yet be achieved through brute force. And if not, then I’ve started to plan for other contingencies.”
“Which is why you asked her to go with you.”
“Indeed.”
“But you can’t make a fighter in two days.”
“Who said anything abut two days? Where I took her, time has no meaning.”
“No meaning?” A chill seeped beneath Nameless’s skin.
Space is no barrier to him, and neither is time.
A homunculus had told him that in the bowels of Gehenna. The same homunculus who’d broken into the Scriptorium and tampered with the Annals. But when Nameless asked if that made the philosopher a servant of the Demiurgos, a creature of the Abyss, he’d been met with stony silence.
Like the homunculus, Aristodeus ignored Nameless’s question.
“You’ll be surprised at how proficient she’s already become, but not half as surprised as Shader. And there’s more to it than fighting. There are other things she may be able to help with later, if we survive the Unweaving.”
“Even though she’s a nobody.” And wasn’t that what he was himself now: a nobody? A dwarf with no name?
“All a nobody needs is a master craftsman to mold her into a somebody,” Aristodeus said. “Only, with Rhiannon, there are matters beyond my control. She has something of a temper, and worse than that, she drinks. A lot.”
“Laddie,” Nameless said, “I think I’m warming to her already.”
QUEENIE’S FINE DINER
“Thought you said it was called Dougan’s Diner,” Nameless said.
Judging by the sign, it quite possibly had been, but someone had painted out the original lettering and replaced it with “Queenie’s Fine Diner”.
“Interesting,” Aristodeus said. “Dougan’s owned this dump for years. Everybody who’s anybody eats here. Well, everybody who’s anybody in the underworld.”
“Thought you told Shadrak not to eat the food.”
“Ah, yes. When I said everybody eats here, I should perhaps have said ‘meets’. Chef Dougan is a man of many talents, but cooking isn’t one of them.”
Something tugged at Nameless’s awareness. Ice prickled the hairs on his forearms. He turned round and looked up at the rooftops opposite. Was that a shadow crouched beside a chimney?
The creak of the door handle distracted him, and he looked away as bells tinkled, and Aristodeus entered the diner.
At the same instant, a scrawny-looking man in clothes a couple of sizes too big came flying out head first. He hit the road, tumbled badly, then picked himself up and set off down the street, mustering as much dignity as he could.
Nameless glanced back at the rooftop, but the shadow was gone.
He was being watched. He was sure of it.
“Nameless,” Shadrak said as he stepped across the threshold and shut the door behind him. The assassin’s new cloak was ragged and frayed, and his face and hands were cut in a score of places. “About shogging time. What kept you?”
“I kept him,” Aristodeus said.
Nameless immediately tuned out as the scent of garlic and fresh-baked bread wafted through the eye-slit of the great helm. It didn’t matter that he’d just been fed through a tube, he was instantly hungry.
A dozen or so tables were stacked with smeared plates and half-empty glasses, but no one seemed to be clearing up. Toward the rear of the diner there were louvered swing doors, from beyond which came the clatter of pots and pans.
Shadrak grabbed Nameless by the arm and took him to one side. “You see anything out there?”
“How did you know?”
“Because it damned near killed me, that’s how. Up on the rooftops. A creature, all black and featureless. Glided down on some sort of membranes beneath its arms.”
“There was a shadow,” Nameless said. “On one of the roofs opposite.”
Shadrak started toward the door, but Nameless held him back. “Gone now. When the scruffy ragamuffin was slung out onto the street. Must have scared it off.”
“Buck Fargin?” Shadrak said. He shared a look with a fat man in a jacket and trousers, both of which were charcoal gray with hair-thin lines in a lighter shade. “Least he was good for something.”
“And he’ll be good for a whole lot more, if he just does as he’s told,” the fat man said. He was bald, save for a strip of hair that ran round the base of his skull. And he was flabby, too, same as Lucius had been. He puckered his lips when he spoke, and he had roving eyes that seemed to constantly take in everyone and everything in the diner.”
“This is Albert,” Shadrak said. “Albert, Nameless.”
“Nameless?” Albert said. “What kind of—”
An interior door slapped open, and out staggered Rhiannon. Judging by the stench that followed her, it must have been the latrine. She looked green as a corpse, her eyes bloods
hot and sunken. “Oh, great,” she growled. “What the shog do you want?”
Aristodeus looked down his nose at her. “From you, nothing more at this juncture. When you are… recovered, we should talk.”
“Nothing to say to you,” she said, propping herself on a stool at the diner’s small bar and reaching for a bottle.
On the stool next to her, one of the punters was slouched over the counter with his head in his beer. He looked a shambles, all matted gray hair and beard, and clothes that were coming apart at the seams.
Albert stepped across Nameless’s field of vision to confront Rhiannon.
“I wouldn’t,” Albert said. “The tisane I gave you doesn’t mix well with alcohol.”
Rhiannon groaned and held her head in her hands.
“Albert’s the new owner of this shithole,” Shadrak explained.”
“Oh?” Aristodeus said. “What happened to Chef Dougan?”
“He ate something that didn’t agree with him,” Albert said.
“It was Albert that moved my plane ship,” Shadrak said to Nameless. “He stowed away when we left Urddynoor. The tosser I just threw outside picked him up on the road, gave him a lift here. Apparently, this is where some of the guild bosses do their deals. Albert got wind of that and decided to set up shop. It’s the same thing he did back home.”
“He’s an assassin?” Nameless said, thinking he looked anything but.
Shadrak nodded. “Poisoner. Best I’ve worked with. Anyhow, thought you’d found a way to get that bucket off your head, got a belly full of booze, and gone to sleep it off.”
“The feeding takes time,” Aristodeus said. “And there were other matters.”
“Such as?” Shadrak said.
“Other matters.”
“It’s all right, laddie,” Nameless said, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Just had a lot to talk about, after what landed me in this helm.”
“I ain’t got a shogging clue what you’re talking about,” Shadrak said, “but right now, I couldn’t give a stuff. We got problems of our own. Shader—”
“He’s not back from the Senate?” Aristodeus said.
“Yeah, like you didn’t know,” Rhiannon said.
“I didn’t, but perhaps I should have.”
But he’d suspected, Nameless knew, and then rationalized the danger away. Was the philosopher less of a planner and thinker than he tried to convey? Was he like a child, hoping things would work out, in spite of evidence to the contrary? Or was it more sinister than that? Had he known all along that Shader would run into trouble? He’d said the knight had had his chance and failed. Was that all he got in Aristodeus’s game? One strike.
“According to Albert’s contact in the Senate, Shader’s been taken into custody. They plan to execute him.”
“What?” Aristodeus said. “For being religious?”
“So, what are you going to do about it?” Rhiannon said.
“Me? Nothing. There’s nothing I can do.” Aristodeus looked haunted, and something fiery flashed across his eyes. He swiftly regained his composure, though. “I am… I am already overstretched, and some actions are just a little too—”
“What, you mean you can’t be bothered?” Rhiannon said. “Or is the great Aristodeus a coward as well as a creep?”
“You wouldn’t understand if I told you!” he thundered.
A hush settled over the diner.
It was Nameless who finally broke the silence. “Way I see it, laddie, if you won’t or can’t do anything, you should go pour yourself a drink and let the grown-ups do the thinking.”
“Did I hear right?” Albert said. “Aristodeus, is it? Come, let me get you something to eat.” There was something predatory about the way Albert looked the philosopher up and down.
“No.” Aristodeus waved away the offer. “But you are right,” he said to Nameless. “This is something you could do. Think of it as reparation.”
Aristodeus went to hover over Rhiannon at the bar. “Perhaps we should make use of the time, have our talk, after all.”
“If we must,” Rhiannon said.
The punter next to her sputtered and shook, turned his head the other way, and resumed his snoring.
Shadrak gestured to a table, and Nameless and Albert joined him there.
“Look,” Shadrak said, “all we know is Shader’s in a cell somewhere on 101st Street.”
Nameless started fumbling in his pockets, but Shadrak put a restraining hand on him.
“No need for a map, mate. I’ve got it all memorized. Now, usually, I’d stake it out, see all the comings and goings, work out the locks and all that, but we don’t have the time. Way I see it, if we can’t prepare for the specifics, we prepare for everything. That’s why I need you, you devious old bastard,” he said to Albert, “and you, my friend,” he said to Nameless, “are there for if it goes tits up.”
“Stealth and hammer, laddie,” Nameless said. “Sounds like a plan to me.”
Albert was scratching his head and frowning. Then a light seemed to go on in his eyes, and he stood.
He was halfway to the door before Shadrak said, “What? What is it?”
Albert threw the door open and hollered out into the street. “Buck! Buck, you cretinous oaf!”
The ragamuffin Shadrak had turfed out appeared in the doorway, having no doubt been eavesdropping.
“Changed you minds? Need me, after all?”
“How could we ever do without you, Buck?” Albert said. “Now, where’s the nearest blacksmith’s?”
Buck opened his mouth to answer, but Albert carried on.
“I need a bellows and a—shit, where are we going to get some tubing?”
Nameless gave a polite cough and stood. He lifted the front of his chainmail hauberk to reveal the coil of clear tubing Aristodeus had taped to his belly in readiness for the next feeding.
“I’m sure old baldilocks has plenty more where this came from.”
He glanced at the bar, but the philosopher hadn’t heard him. He was deep in conversation with Rhiannon, if that’s what you could call it. Aristodeus was doing all the talking.
With a grunt, Nameless yanked out the tube and stemmed the flow of blood with his free hand.
“Yes,” Albert said. “Yes, that will do nicely.”
GLIMPSES OF SELF
The suns rose bloody, casting the basilica that housed the Senatorial chambers in a battlefield hue. The brightening sky was all smudges of greens, grays, and browns as sickness continued to roll in from Gandaw’s mountain.
The jail behind the basilica looked of newish build. It was a squat brick and mortar construction with just the one way in and out—an iron-bound hardwood door. The soft glow of lantern light spilled over from the far side, where workmen were hard at it putting the finishing touches to a guillotine.
Nameless staggered on past Albert under the weight of the beer keg he’d lugged all the way from Dougan’s Diner—or Queenie’s or whatever the poisoner had changed the name to. Tankards clattered from within the bag slung over his shoulder.
Albert was already in position, kneeling beneath the nearside window of the jail and running the tubing Nameless had yanked from his guts up through the bars. The other end was attached to the hand bellows Buck Fargin had come back with, and that was connected to the bell-jar containing the evil-stinking gas the poisoner had concocted.
The guard on the front entrance started awake as Nameless passed him and set the barrel down. Before the fellow could say anything, Nameless cried out in a booming voice, “Beer for the workers! Come and get it, lads!”
A chorus of exclamations erupted from the platform the guillotine stood upon, and a big man came into view.
“Beer? Who sent it? Not them shoggers in the Senate, surely?”
Nameless didn’t reply. He simply tapped the barrel and filled one of the tankards. The man took it from him, had a taste, then called his mates over.
“Sir?” the door guard said, as he approached. “Excus
e me, sir…”
Nameless handed him a beer. “I won’t say anything if you don’t, laddie. Go on, get that down you.”
Desire was written all over the guard’s ruddy face. Judging by his bulbous nose and the veins webbing it, he was as likely to refuse a drink as any self-respecting dwarf. Humans, it seemed, weren’t so different, after all.
Taking his cue from the workmen bustling over to line up at the barrel, the guard took a sip that became a swig, and then he necked the tankard in a long, glugging pull.
All the while, Albert was pumping furiously on the bellows, and the job was as good as done.
One by one, the workmen took to the beer like it was Cordy’s Arnochian Ale. It wasn’t. Even a drinker of Ironbelly’s would have been hard-pressed to swallow such gnat’s piss, but Albert had augmented it with something from a glass vial, and the workmen were buying it.
By the time Shadrak came jogging down the cobbled road, from where he’d been on rooftop lookout, everyone but the guard was out cold. The assassin had a blood-speckled dagger in either hand.
Nameless perched on the edge of the barrel and held a tankard up before the eye-slit. Piss or no piss, poisoned or otherwise, he’d have given his right arm for a swill of cold beer in his mouth.
“What the shog are you doing?” Shadrak said, striding straight past.
Nameless swiveled round to see what he was talking about.
The guard had his sword out and was stumbling toward Albert, who was reeling in the tubing with a smug grin on his fat face.
Albert hadn’t seen the danger, and he bent down to disconnect the tubing from the bellows. The guard raised his sword and half-tripped, half-ran in a swaying zigzag toward him. Shadrak ran, too, but he was too far off to use a dagger. He stopped for a moment to sheathe one of the knives and grab a razor star.
In that moment, Albert lunged for the guard and got a garrote around his throat.