The lights disappeared. The siren faded but never stopped. Always, there seemed some siren blaring.
Still, Maran walked. Outside the city, the lights dimmed. In the expanse above her, Maran saw nothing but strange stars. There was no spiral. There was a moon, but much too small, touching the horizon. The stars all seemed less colorful and further away, like they were on a painted background that moved across the sky as a dome. The stars did not move in any patterns at all, or if they did, they moved so slowly that Maran could not see them move.
Were the stars dead here, too?
With the last light of the moon soon left behind, the darkness proved too difficult, so Maran took hold of Kepi’s collar again, letting her guide their way down black roads.
Maran had nothing but her own thoughts to keep her company. She thought about her own recent behavior and was appalled at what an ass she had just been towards everyone. How had she thought such awful thoughts? How could she have distrusted everyone who had ever helped her? How could she have wished harm upon them? Maran vowed to apologize to everyone twice when she got back. They would wave her off, but that was not the point. She was apologizing for her own good conscience, not for their satisfaction. She knew right from wrong and polite from impolite, whether or not she had any Red Snake in her.
In the distance, something lit up the trees. It looked a long way off, but it was definitely there. Eventually mounds blocked the light. That must be the knackery. Soon, Maran found herself wandering through towering heaps of grave goods.
Kepi wandered off, then returned carrying something. Hearing a lapping sound, Maran looked down to her dog trying to chew into a skull. “Stop it, girl. Come on. No need causing more trouble than I already have.”
Kepi looked longingly at the skull, then back at Maran.
“I said no. Come on.”
Reluctantly, Kepi left the head and followed Maran to the gate.
The soldiers knew her now. “V.I.P.” the soldier yelled out. “Open the gate.” The soldier then picked up the talking device.
Maran had no idea what vee-eye-pee meant, but she was glad that it cleared her in.
Walking through the gates, Maran found the camp bustling. They were busily cleaning equipment and putting away arms.
Joyfully, Ebon strolled up to Maran. “Mon ami, it is so good to see you. Your mission was quite the success, no? My Mistress and the Iron Duke drove out La Belle Dame sans Merci. It was a battle to behold. Bullets lit the sky. Machines flew. The Iron Duke’s gun blared like a horn. Never have I heard so many bullets fired so fast. The Red Lady had enough, and she flew away.”
“What about the featherheads?”
That topic caught Ebon’s attention. “They are still free. Do you know something about them?”
“They still hold friends of mine.”
“Then Justice cannot rest. If you think that you can find them, then I will help.”
“I don’t know if I can find them, and if I do find them, then I don’t know what to do.”
“I will do that for you, but I will need my guns back from the armory. Come.”
Ebon took them down a musty concrete stairwell to an underground door set in concrete. Ebon pushed a button by the door. “Ebon Sol,” she said.
With a buzz, something clicked. Ebon opened the door, grabbing it with both hands and using her whole weight to swing it open. Through the door, they walked into a small room with a counter and bars. Behind the iron bars sat a dwarf.
“Greis!” exclaimed Maran.
“Howdy, ma’am! Good to see ya. The Duke lent me out to these folks. Sure’s a mess over here. What can I do for y’alls?”
Ebon ordered, “Armorer, I want my baby.”
“I haven’t cleaned ‘er up yet. I’m all stacked up. I only just finished collecting everything up.”
“I want my baby back now.”
Greis shook her head, then brought out a long case. “Everybody’s in a rush these days. They know how to clean their own damn guns, everyone one of ‘em, but give ‘em a dwarf, and they know who does it best. Ma’am, it’s on your head if she jams.”
“Just hand her over.”
Greis slid the wooden case to Ebon.
Ebon opened the long case, revealing the most beautiful rifle that Maran had ever seen. The entire stock and barrel were covered with a rose motif and were painted to match. The stock was deeply carved, showing every thorn and every leaf, as if the stock itself were made of a rose bush.
Looking in the case, Ebon frowned. She picked up one box and shook it, showing her annoyance. “Where are my copperheads?”
“You shot ‘em, and I ain’t got no more. You want some yellow jackets? How about some rivets?”
Ebon showed her anger. “What do you mean there are no more? There must be more. I can’t change my load out before a shoot.”
“Ma’am, I don’t got any. Nothin’. Zilch. That last fight tapped me out. Maybe after I clean this place up I can find some more, but I can’t guarantee anythin’.”
“I want copperheads. I only shoot copperheads. And no rivets. The shellac on your steel casings fouls my ejector.”
“Ma’am, you know that Malachar ain’t dealing with us no more. The Lord of Copper’s thrown in with the Bloodletters. I can look. I can trade. It’ll take time. In the meantime, that’s all I’ve got. Yell all you want, I ain’t got nothin’ more.”
“Damn. Five copperheads. Six featherheads. I’ll manage somehow. What about the gravedigger there? What does she get?”
Maran waved off the offer. “I don’t want anything. I do not like violence.”
Ebon slammed her gun down. “Maran, in my day, everyone was so scared of excavateurs that your people had to march at the back of the army. What happened to you?”
This outburst caught Maran by surprise. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“After a fight, it was your job to dispatch the wounded. You didn’t flinch. You were downright frightening. You walked up to people and knew, just knew, who was living and dead, who was dying and who could be saved. You diggers could see it plain as day. And if they were dying, you spoke with and listened to the dying, then ordered death upon them. That’s what it means to be an excavateur. That’s what it means to give the White Lady her due. Are you willing to end the suffering of the dying?”
“We don’t do that any more.”
“Then who does? Who shows pitié to the wounded?”
“The soldiers.”
“That’s the problem with the world, everyone forgets their place. Listen, excavateur, you remember your due. Dispatching the wounded is holy work. I’ll do you a favor, and you’ll remember it. Greis, get her something.”
Greis drew a rifle out of the cabinet and put it onto the counter. “Ma’am, this is Bessy. She was a model gun. She won’t fail you. You take this and do your job.”
“I will not take a gun.”
“She has a bayonet if you don’t like shooting ‘er.”
“I will not take a weapon.”
Ebon sighed in exasperation, speaking to the unpresent god, “Madam Blanche, your servant is a fool.”
Greis went back and rooted about a bit more. “The Duke sent this with me. I thought it was a joke.” Greis held up a short shovel-like contraption. “It adjusts. It can be a shovel, a pick, or sorta both. You can even fold it up for packing. Will you take this?”
Maran considered it for a second. It really did look like a little shovel. She could not figure out how to make it into a weapon. “Yes, I’ll take the shovel. Will that make you happy?”
“I’m not the one taking the shovel, ma’am.”
Greis slid the shovel over the counter. Maran took it even though it was iron. “It’s unclean, but I figure that I’m pretty unclean at this point anyway. I’m not making anything worse.”
“As you say, ma’am.”
Ebon slung her rifle over her shoulder. “We should leave. Let’s drive.”
End of the Earth
Ebon took her to a little shed, which she opened up, revealing a car quite unlike any that Maran had expected. It was a little round car and not scary looking at all.
“It’s not much,” said Ebon, “But it goes. Get in.”
Maran looked at the door and pushed the button next to the handle. The door clicked open easily. When she settled onto her seat, Kepi jumped in and tried sitting on her lap, wagging her tail in Maran’s face.
Ebon got into the car as well, but did not start it. “How exactly do we get there, or where? You never did say.”
Maran fended off the tail. “I think Kepi might know. She can find anything, I think. Honestly, I don’t know what she can do. I call her my dog, but I think I’m her pet, to be altogether honest. Kepi, can you find those featherheads?”
Kepi bounded out of the car and looked back, then waited.
“She can,” said Maran.
Ebon started her car, which started far more quietly than Matilda.
“What’s your car’s name?” asked Maran.
“It’s just a car,” replied Ebon. “It doesn’t have a name.” Ebon pulled a knob and light emerged from the front of her car. The lights worked without fire, but looked nothing like Altyn’s strange fireless lights.
When Ebon made the car move, Kepi started walking ahead. The soldiers at the gate saluted, opening up and letting them through. As soon as they were out of the gate, Kepi ran ahead as fast as possible. The car easily kept pace.
Ebon soon grew impatient, stopping the car. “This is taking forever. The dog will never get us there. All the featherheads will be gone. We must go faster. I have an idea. You, get in back. Have Kepi sit in your seat.”
Maran climbed into the cramped back seat and Kepi back in. Ebon rolled down the windows for the dog. As soon as Ebon got the car rolling, Kepi stuck her head out the window, her nose acting as a compass. Ebon drove faster and Kepi’s tail wagged faster.
Kepi guided them along empty roads. The car’s lights revealed the world anew, as if it had never been seen before. It yielded its secrets only at the last moment. Nothing was there until it was. Ebon made the lights shine even brighter, but the darkness did not give in so easily. Shadows crept around the car more aggressively, rising and falling like waves of black following them along the road. Yet even as they threatened, they fell away as a harmless tide. Behind them, their light swirled in the darkness until it was consumed.
Sometimes, on the road, they saw eyes reflecting in those lights. At first, Maran thought they existed beyond the road, but on closer look, they were eyes embedded in the road. Most were small eyes, as if small creatures were trapped there. Some eyes were stranger, from creatures unlike those that Maran expected. Some were terrible eyes, as if the road bound them away from mortal dreams, and if they were to escape, would wreck nightmares across all the world.
The engine vibrated under Maran’s seat. The night air swirled about the car in a gentle roar. Kepi’s tail wagged, pounding against the dashboard. Almost inaudibly, Ebon hummed to herself, the same tune, over and over. Somehow, all this seemed enjoyable. Maran had never imagined that she could like a car ride, but tonight she did. Ebon did not drive fast like Jack, nor recklessly like the featherheads. Instead, she moved along at a steady pace, more like a hike through the woods than anything else that she knew.
Sometimes, they drove along gentle roads with fences and hedges or vaulted trees creating wooded corridors. Other times, they moved along roads paved in stone and lined with ruins as strange and mysterious as those unexpected creatures that dashed away from the road. Too often, they hinted of things best left forgotten.
“Old places,” said Ebon. “There are lots of them. They’re so old that even my mistress does not know who they belonged to or why they are here. I’ve never really stopped to explore them. They are more dangerous and more strange than I can explain. If you could see them, you would understand.”
At first, these old places were very interesting to Maran. She did her best to make out strange faces carved on walls, or the shapes of houses, or what exactly lay behind the field of pillars. As the night grew on, such mysteries became routine and Maran no longer noticed them.
Sometimes Ebon sang as she drove. They were strange tunes, sounding very different from anything that Maran had ever head before. The songs were simple and catchy and sometimes very silly, not at all like the tunes that she imagined dryads would sing.
I love you and you love me.
It’s as plain as it can be.
Let’s carve our names into a tree
and make a bouncing bay-bee.
Eventually, Ebon ran out of songs, and then they drove in quiet.
Concern slowly crept across Ebon’s face. “We’ve been driving a long time. Are you sure your dog can really do this, or does she just like her head out the window? We’re halfway to Anthosa.”
Maran shrugged. “She’s a soul hound. She’s good at finding things. At worst, we’ll waste our time.”
“You have no idea what ‘worst’ is. So far, she’s been taking us around some very bad places, but we might not stay so lucky. I don’t know out here. We can easily turn for the worse. Have her stop us when we get near the featherheads. We don’t want to blunder into them.”
In the distance, something flashed through the clouds, slender and simple against the predawn. Kepi barked at it.
Ebon smiled. “Oh, the lighthouse. They must be there. That was obvious. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“How is it obvious?” asked Maran.
“It’s a high place. The Red Lady prefers high places.”
Just like the Beehive, Maran thought, where Tavan had been, or the tall building where the Red Lady had lounged.
Ebon slowed down. Houses neared. The little car rolled into a little town. No one seemed awake yet. The road ended among some buildings fronted by a wooden sidewalk. Beyond that lay sand and the sea, or what Maran presumed was the sea.
Maran had never seen the sea before. It seemed terrible and frightening, full of all sorts of ‘worst’ things.
With a twist, Ebon turned the car off. With that, her lights went out as well. Dawn filled the sky. A dull booming echoed across the morning. The air smelt of salt.
Ebon exited the car, then helped Maran out. Kepi bounded out on her own and took off running up and down the beach. Ebon opened up the car’s front, revealing a compartment. From among the things there, Ebon took a blanket. “I’ll need this,” she said.
Ebon walked casually toward the wooden walk as if the ocean were not there. Each step she took made no noise, while Maran found her own footsteps sounding soft and revealing, as if the sand wished to tell the sea that a dwarf trespassed upon it. As she walked, she kept glancing towards the waves, always looking to see if the sea were rolling in after her. She had heard about the tide. Sometimes, it comes in after you.
On the wooden walk, they passed glass-fronted stores, none yet open, with goods displayed prominently in large windows. The glass panes were far larger than any Maran had ever seen. Pausing to touch one, Maran wondered at the secret of their production. A Vitrean guild could make a fortune producing such windows.
Come to think of it, the shops in the Steel City also had large glass windows. Why hadn’t she noticed them before? Why had she not been awed? Or had there been just too many other things to be in awe of?
In the window, Maran saw the sea reflected and knew fear again. The sea would come and drag her down to Anthosa if she did not act carefully. The sea hated her and merely bided its time.
Ebon stopped at a table made of long wooden slats. She stared at the lighthouse further up the beach, out on a promontory. “I see one featherhead up top and two by the bottom door. Do you see them?”
Maran
strained to see what Ebon saw. “I can’t see them. Wait a minute, I do see one on top.”
Ebon tossed her rolled-up blanket onto the table. From her breast pocket, she took out her bullets. She pulled back the bolt on her gun, then one by one, with no more concern than if she had been washing dishes, she pushed the bullets down into the rifle. After all five were in, she closed the bolt.
Ebon knelt beside the table. She put the gun across the blanket roll and pulled the stock up to her shoulder. With little pause, she judged her shot. “How far do you think that is? Five to seven bowshots with a stiff crosswind? Fairly simple, no?”
The dryad leaned her rifle firmly into the table and aimed long and gently.
The tension was too much for Maran. She had no desire to watch people die, or even to participate. Even here in this unreal place, such actions were foreign to her.
“I can’t watch this,” said Maran. “I’m sorry. Go ahead. Do what you want. This is what you do. I can’t watch. Kepi, help her out if you like.”
Ebon nodded to her. “As you decide, excavateur. You don’t let others push you around, and you don’t say yes to please them. You hold onto that. In this world beyond death, what is inside your heart matters.”
Maran walked back to the car and sat down in the front seat. Occasionally, she heard a dull sound ring out, and knew what that meant, but mostly she only heard the terrible thrum of the waves on the shore. Every so often, she heard the shorebirds squawk as they fought over a bit of food found among the shops.
Sometime later, Ebon walked up to the car. Kepi walked behind her, looking rather playful and wet. “Your dog was a big help. Thanks. There’s more to be done. Let’s drive over.”
Ebon drove them through the town, then through its grassy outskirts. Dunes and grasses hid the car from the lighthouse. The sun now shone over the sea, illuminating the lighthouse while leaving the road in the shade.
Standing Between Earth and Heaven Page 21