by D. P. Prior
“You were strong enough to capture that evil shogger when it mattered,” Nameless said. “But lore like Blightey’s, sorcery he’s been developing for centuries: how could mortal folk stand against that?”
Shadrak shook his head. “Maybe I ain’t mortal folk. All this time you’ve been calling me a homunculus, and I thought you were taking the piss. But Bird told me the truth of what I am on the way to Verusia. Told me how I came to end up with Kadee. How I’d originally been brought to Urddynoor as a baby in this very plane ship.”
Nameless took his time letting it all sink in before he made his reply. He had to tread carefully. Shadrak was raw with anguish, and one wrong word could send him over the edge.
“I ever tell you I never knew my ma, laddie?”
Shadrak dipped his eyes to the floor. “Least you had one.”
“True. And I’m glad of that. But when my ma gave her life so I could live, she probably never realized the hole it would leave. I don’t blame her. I love her dearly for what she gave up for me. My pa, too. When I woke up in Arx Gravis, I had no recollection of my pa or my brother at first. No idea who I was, and I’ve come to realize I’ll never know what name it was my parents chose for me. All this time, I’ve been working out who I am now, because I can never go back to who I was. It’s the same for you, laddie: everything you believed to be true was a lie, but it’s up to you to find the real Shadrak, the one you were born to be.”
“No,” Shadrak said. “It’s not the same. You had parents. You were born, you were raised. Me, from what I can tell, I fell like a scab from the Demiurgos. A diseased scab the homunculi wanted to discard. Bird saved me, had me brought to Kadee. He was different, see. One of the Sedition. They’re tying to be what they are not, Nameless, fighting against the scut that spawned them. But what’s the point? You can’t change what you are? The son of a scut is a scut himself, no matter what spin you put on it.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Nameless said. “The Shadrak I know, the one who spared Galen by putting a bullet through Ludo’s skull, he’s no child of the Abyss. He’s someone I’m proud to know. He’s my friend, and I’ll punch you on the nose if you say otherwise.”
Shadrak half-laughed, half-sobbed. He put his chin in his hands and closed his eyes.
“Yeah? Well he’s also the scut that was told to kill you.”
Chill seeped beneath Nameless’s skin. “Oh?”
Shadrak looked up, right into the eye-slit. “By the Archon.”
Nameless drew in a deep breath and bobbed the great helm. “Aye, that shogger’s been after me for a while. I have to ask, though, laddie, if you’re so good at your job, why am I still standing?”
Shadrak swallowed, looked away, looked back again. His pink eyes glistened with unshed tears.
“I’ll tell you why,” Nameless said. “Because you are my friend, as I am yours. Don’t ask me how, but I just know these things. I’ve had a lot of friends in my life, but only two I’d call good friends, so good they were family.”
He broke off, choked down his own tears. Even now, thinking of how he’d lost Thumil and Cordy hurt more than anything Blightey could have done to him.
When he’d restored his composure, he said, “And now, I’d say I had a third.”
Shadrak stared blankly at him for a long while. He grimaced, as if he were fighting back tears, but then he slumped, and the tears began to fall.
Nameless went to him, tried to embrace him, but the Lich Lord’s armor was just too bulky. It was a shell, a carapace, a barrier between him and others. And already, he was starting to see it as a curse, same as the gauntlets, the black axe, and the helm that was supposed to keep him safe.
He backed away a step. “Will the Archon know you’ve told me?”
Shadrak shrugged. “That’s what he’d like me to think. He’s in my head at times, telling me what he expects. But I’m a keen observer. You have to be in my line of work. And what I’ve learned so far is, he’s not all-knowing, and he’s definitely not a god.”
Nameless leaned in and kept his voice low. “So, he can be killed?”
Shadrak nodded. “It’s just a matter of how.” He tapped his temple. “But I already have the inkling of an idea. One more thing: I don’t think I’m the only one the Archon approached about killing you. You know how people change around you, become suddenly pally just before they ram the knife in?”
Nameless didn’t, and so he shrugged.
“It’s common among my kind,” Shadrak said. “You develop a sort of sixth sense about it, which you ignore at your peril. My gut tells me the Archon’s got tired of waiting. And Bird…” He paused to swallow. “Bird told me the Archon had spoken with Albert. I imagine that means we’re both for the chop, not just you.”
“Albert?” Nameless glanced at the bottle on the table. “You think he’s poisoned your booze?”
“Maybe,” Shadrak said. “But that wouldn’t account for what he’s got planned for you. He knows you can’t drink in that helm.”
“If the Archon really has approached Albert.” He didn’t need to add that Bird was a homunculus, and may have had his own agenda.
Shadrak’s silence conveyed that he’d made his mind up.
“Is there proof?” Nameless asked.
“In the guilds, when this sort of thing happens, you wait about for proof, and you end up bobbing down the river with your throat slit. No, I go by my gut, and if I’m wrong, well, shit happens, don’t it?”
Before Nameless could respond, the door swooshed open, and Albert stood there.
“Oh, I didn’t realize you had company,” the poisoner said. “I’ll come back later.”
“No,” Shadrak said. “I was wanting to speak with you.” To Nameless, he said, “Thank you. It means a lot to me, what you said. You should rest before we head back to the Perfect Peak.”
Albert stepped into the cabin as Nameless stepped out.
“Oh, and Nameless,” Shadrak said, “I’ve not had a friend before. Just make sure I do it right, eh?”
Nameless nodded that he would.
As the door shut behind him, he heard Albert say, “Charming. And I thought we were friends.”
A GAME OF COGNAC
Albert seated himself in the half-egg chair opposite Shadrak, and without being asked took the remaining glass and poured himself a cognac.
“You been sneaking in here and helping yourself?” Shadrak said.
Albert made a show of reading the label. “I knew you wouldn’t mind, not really.” He took a sip, closed his eyes, and swilled the cognac around his mouth before swallowing. “Look, Shadrak, we need to talk.”
“I’ll say.”
Albert lifted his glass to his lips for another sip. Shadrak was half-inclined to warn him, but decided against it. Whatever the poisoner had to say, he’d grown too dangerous, too much of a liability.
When Albert pushed the bottle toward him, Shadrak held up a hand and said, “Just talk.”
“It’s quite safe,” Albert said. “See.” He took a big gulp of his own.
If only he knew. Shadrak had been expecting something like this, though he hadn’t set a time on it. The first thing he’d learned about Albert was never to accept food or drink from him. He’d seen any number of Albert’s so-called friends die at his hands, usually over a gourmet meal or a drink. He was a cunning shogger. Sly. But not sly enough. Before Nameless had arrived, Shadrak had taken the precaution of slipping in a little something of his own. Well, not his own, strictly speaking: a sprinkle of Albert’s infamous sausage poison, for which there was no immunity. No known cure. Two could play at thieving from someone else’s cabin.
Shadrak chuckled. He tried to make it good-natured. “Just because you’re drinking it, doesn’t mean it’s safe. I know you, Albert. Know you spend weeks and months building up your tolerance to all the crap you use.”
“Well, you clearly don’t know me as well as you thought,” Albert said. He drained his glass and refilled it. “And
I have to say, I’m deeply wounded that you would consider the dwarf a friend and not me.”
Shadrak shook his head. “So, what is it you want to discuss?”
He was expecting Albert to apologize for his absence during the fight with Blightey. On the way back through the snow, Albert had already done his best to convince the others he was sorry, that he’d heard something and gone to investigate. That when he’d returned, the door was locked shut, and this time he could do nothing to get it open, as if it were held by magic.
“In a word,” Albert said, “or rather, two: the Archon.”
Shadrak forced himself not to react, not to give anything away, even the fact he was surprised Albert was willing to risk bringing the subject up.
“He approached me,” Albert said. “At first, I didn’t know what to do, so I just listened. But now, with all that’s happened, with all that’s currently happening, I thought I should confide in you. It doesn’t pay for there to be secrets among friends. Not when the stakes are so high.”
That was the whiff of bullshit Shadrak was waiting for. Albert always had secrets, same as the other Sicarii. Same as Shadrak himself. Assassins were loyal to an extent, but only so far as it carried them. First sign of trouble, and they’d stick a knife in your back. Or wrap a cheese-cutter round your throat.
“What did he say?”
Albert leaned across the table conspiratorially. “That you’re supposed to kill the dwarf.”
“And?”
“And that he doesn’t think you’re going to do it.”
Shadrak leaned back in his chair, let his cloak fall open to reveal a flintlock at his hip. “So, he asked you to get the job done?”
Albert nodded.
Now, there was another surprise.
“What else?”
A frown crossed Albert’s face, and he closed his eyes.
“What else?” Shadrak repeated.
Albert held up a hand, puckered his lips, and screwed his nose up. He swallowed thickly a couple of times, and then belched.
“Sorry. Drank that last one a bit too fast. Are you sure you won’t?” He offered the bottle once more.
Shadrak raised an eyebrow and waited for Albert to continue.
“Now, understand, I’m only telling you this to cement our trust-based relationship.” Albert glanced around the room, then lowered his voice. “Can he hear us? I mean, does he know what we’re saying? What we’re thinking?”
Shadrak shrugged.
“Well,” Albert said. “He’s hinted that, if you don’t act soon, by which I think he means before Nameless gets all three artifacts, I am to step in.”
“What makes him think you would do that?” What was the Archon offering?
“Maybe I’ve already said too much.” Albert eyed the bottle on the table.
“Unless I join you in a drink?”
“It’s about trust, Shadrak. Bonding. You know the sort of thing.”
“I know what happens to those who trust you, Albert. I wasn’t born yesterday.”
Albert put a fist to his mouth and belched again.
“I’m fully aware of that. This isn’t easy, you know. I’m secretive by nature. We all are. But I don’t mind admitting, I’m out of my depth. Fine. Go ahead. Think I’m trying to poison you, if you like. But know this: I’ve been looking out for you, keeping the Archon off your back. He’s angry, Shadrak, and it’s all I can do to keep him at bay. You want to know more? Well, I’ll tell you more. He wants me to kill you. First Nameless, and then you. It seems you’ve become something of a loose cannon in his tidily ordered universe. An assassin is meant to assassinate. Empathy, or whatever it is that’s staying your hand, doesn’t fit the profile.”
Albert winced and clutched his stomach.
“What’s up?” Shadrak asked. “Didn’t build up an immunity to your own poison?”
Albert’s cheeks puffed up to twice their normal size. He leaned forward as if he were going to vomit, then flung himself back in his chair, wiped sweat from his forehead, and finally let out a colossal burp.
“For the last time,” he said, swaying to one side. “I did… not… pois…”
He slumped over the side of the chair. A stream of foul-smelling vomit splashed onto the floor, and when the torrent stopped, Albert was dead as a doornail.
“Yes,” Shadrak muttered. “But I did.”
He picked up the cognac bottle, peered at the dregs within to see if there was any trace of sausage poison discernible.
He wondered if Albert had tampered with the cognac. Wondered if he’d been telling the truth, if he really had been coming clean. There was no point speculating on it. Scuts like Albert lied so much, they didn’t know what the truth was anymore. It could have been he was being honest, for once, only to trick Shadrak into swallowing another lie. But with Albert, there was no way of knowing if he was bluffing or double bluffing, or even triple bluffing. Even if there was a way, Shadrak couldn’t be shogged with it right now. Albert had always been a danger, and with what Bird had said about him speaking with the Archon, the time had come for preemptive action. That’s how it was done in the guilds. The worrying thing was that Albert seemed to have forgotten. Either that, or he took Shadrak for a complete moron. Not that it made any difference now. The poisoner was out of the way, and that just left the Archon to deal with.
Shadrak pushed himself out of his seat. It sank back into the floor as he swiped shapes on the panel next to the bed.
Beads of quicksilver condensed out of the floor and oozed over Albert’s corpse, the same as the beetles had smothered Blightey. Within minutes, there would be nothing left of the poisoner. The plane ship’s army of cleaners was more efficient than an acid bath.
THE FINAL QUEST
“One last quest,” Aristodeus said when they arrived back at the Perfect Peak, “and then no more black axe. See, Nameless, I told you I’d have you out of that helm eventually. Where are the others?”
“Dead,” Galen said, slumping down on a console.
“All of them?”
“Ludo,” Nameless said. “Ekyls. Bird. Not really worth it, laddie, is it? All this, just for the sake of a dwarf with too much blood on his hands.”
“Blightey?” Aristodeus said.
“What do you shogging think?” Shadrak said.
“Don’t put the blame on me,” Aristodeus said. “In and out, I said.”
“And it would have been,” Galen said, in a voice thick with emotion. “If not for His Eminence.”
“Laddie,” Nameless said. “It wasn’t his fault.”
“Yes, it scutting was,” Shadrak said. “If he hadn’t gone waltzing up to the castle like he did, no one would have had to die.”
Nameless expected an eruption from Galen, but he merely twirled his mustache and said, “He’s right. No point denying the truth of what happened. But it takes nothing from…” His words choked away, and he sniffed. “From what…” He could no longer suppress the keening moan that welled up from his guts.
Galen’s pain was almost tangible, and somehow Nameless felt he was the cause of it. His cheeks beneath the helm burned with shame.
“I’m sorry,” Aristodeus said. “Truly sorry for your loss. Your losses. But we’ve come so far. It would be foolish to turn back now.” He suddenly looked round. “Where’s Albert, by the way?”
Galen looked up, as if he’d only just noticed, too, but he seemed either unsurprised or indifferent.
Nameless had a pretty good idea what had happened, but he deferred to Shadrak.
“Cognac,” the assassin said. “It’s why I don’t touch the stuff any longer. He’ll be out of action for a while.”
A very long while, Nameless imagined.
“No loss,” Aristodeus said. “If anything, the fewer the better for this last quest. And this time, you must stick to the plan. Same as before: get in, and get out as quick as you can. If anything, it’s even more vital. The portal you’ll be taking isn’t exactly stable. Mephesch is jury
-rigging it as we speak. You are to meet him in the Great West back on Urddynoor.”
“What the shog do we need a portal for,” Shadrak said, “when we’ve got a plane ship?”
“Because,” Aristodeus said, “your destination is one place even a plane ship cannot travel.”
“Where?” Nameless said, dreading the answer.
“The last artifact you need is the Shield of Warding that protects against all manner of magic, even the backlash you can expect from the black axe when it realizes its peril. The Cynocephalus who made the shield sleeps beneath it, same as he used to sleep in that armor you now wear.
“Nameless, Shadrak, Galen, prepare yourselves. You are going to the deepest strata of Gehenna, and the fastest and surest way of getting there is via the Abyss.”
***
They left the plane ship by one of its many side doors, stepping out into stark light that came from overhead strips. All about them, homunculi scurried with their gray slates in hand.
They were in a hall of some sort. It was so vast, Nameless could only see the nearest wall: perfectly cut gray bricks, neatly mortared, studded with heavy doors painted cyan. There were yellow signs with black symbols on each of the doors.
The floor had been reduced to rubble, apparently dug up to reveal an immense circuit of interconnected pipes. They were made from some sleek red material, and followed a series of twists and turns until they terminated at the foot of a metal archway.
Mephesch, the homunculus who’d been Sektis Gandaw’s righthand man, was beneath the arch, inspecting the wires that connected it to the pipes. Suddenly, he looked up and raised a hand. The other homunculi—there must have been upward of thirty—seemed to glide to the walls and melt away from sight.
One of the doors opened, and a man came in. He was armored in splint mail beneath a black cloak. There was a clenched fist emblazoned on his shield, and he carried a spear.
The soldier turned his eyes on the companions, opened his mouth to shout, but a homunculus emerged from the wall behind him. There was a fizz, a buzz, a flash of violet light, and the soldier collapsed in a heap.