The Nine

by Tracy Townsend

  In less than a minute, he knew where to find them—Chalmers and Rowena and Anselm. A moment later, he knew the safest way out, and it made him curse.

  It was a job, of course. They were hardly ever easy. It was the aigamuxa that would make this exit particularly hard.

  32.

  Smallduke Regenzi stood beside Deacon Fredericks in the low belfry tower, looking up into a sky full of eyes, winking and glaring against the dark.

  “We shouldn’t waste time here,” Fredericks whispered. Regenzi looked at the deacon coldly, the flushed, fleshy man tugging his sleeve like some mewling child with wet britches. “Things have gone far out of our control. The bishop—”

  Regenzi shrugged off Fredericks’s hand, dusting himself back into order. “The bishop,” he corrected, “proposed that I manage this affair on his behalf. He gave me leave to proceed as I saw fit.”

  “And he asked me to mind his interests as you did so. I don’t imagine he had quite this situation in mind, my lord.”

  “It is my situation now,” Regenzi snapped. “Stay or go as you like. When I’ve seen this matter through and given the bishop professor the book and the names, I’ll remember who helped me—and who held me back.”

  Fredericks’s flushed face seemed to pale. He looked back up at the rafters above.

  Idiot. Regenzi wondered if he was truly the only one of his company who understood how to use an enemy strategically. Things would have been a deal easier if His Grace hadn’t saddled me with a milquetoast bookkeeper of a second.

  He sighed. Done was done, and there was still much yet to be done. Regenzi lifted his face and spoke into the darkness. “I’ve come to you because I want you to understand this is all a ruse, Nasrahiel. Meteron is insane to think he could face you in single combat, but he’s useful up to that point. Surely that’s plain to you.”

  One pair of eyes, larger and fiercer than the rest, swung through the rafters, traveling the twenty feet down to the floor where its hulking body landed in that strangely perfect pose. Regenzi stared into the eyeless face and the eye heels flanking it.

  “It is plain that I am a tool,” the aigamuxa chieftain replied. “You offer me up to this serpent’s satisfaction because it serves you, despite the risk to me.”

  The slithery sounds of aigamuxa speaking in their own tongue whispered through the air. Regenzi knew not a word of it, though he had heard their speech since childhood. But he recognized the tone. Men at the edge of civility murmured their displeasure in just that way—up until the moment of things breaking.

  Fredericks cleared his throat. “The risk is infinitesimally small. Even well armed, a single man can’t expect—”

  “There are such things,” Nasrahiel answered, his voice slow and dangerous, “as principles, Deacon. They guide how one honors an allegiance.”

  “Principles have guided this entire venture, Nasrahiel. You’ve known that from the beginning.”

  The aigamuxa tilted his head at Regenzi.

  “Fear has guided this venture. This, I have known from the beginning. I am the only one among us with principles.”

  The air rumbled with the aigamuxa’s bellows, so loud the old bronze bell teetering overhead hummed in response. There were many more of them nesting in the belfry, its spare shafts of moonlight the only illumination their blood-milk eyes required.

  Regenzi glared at Nasrahiel. “There are certain comments I won’t endure from my subordinates. Keep a rein on your tongue, Nasrahiel, or I may find myself with small cause to care what Meteron tries to do to you.”

  “It is touching to think you ever did.”

  “I didn’t know your kind could pout. It’s quite human of you.”

  The aigamuxa’s feet whirled back to the ground. He towered over Regenzi, the white scars along his shoulders purpling.

  “Despise me if you like, but do not mock me. There are also comments we will endure no longer.”

  The belfry erupted in a chorus of hoots and jeers, like a pack of wolves set loose in a primate house. Hackles Regenzi had not known he had rose in prickly response.

  Another aigamuxa arrived, then, hurling itself up the ladder from the clerestory level below. It spoke to Nasrahiel first, growling several phrases before the chieftain’s shoulders relaxed, the rage giving way to a tremble and then a quake.

  The chieftain’s laughter sawed Regenzi’s ears.

  “What’s so funny?” Fredericks demanded.

  The new arrival answered in surprisingly deft Amidonian. “He Who Dared is with the translator and the girl. He demanded to keep the keys. I was told this would be your will.”

  Regenzi scowled. “He gave you reasons?”

  “Poor ones.”

  “Return with one of your brothers, then, and—”

  “Do not,” Nasrahiel snapped. “It is already too late.”

  Regenzi turned on his lieutenant. “We have an understanding: I give the orders.”

  “That understanding has been outlived.”

  Fredericks’s hand plucked Regenzi’s sleeve, pulling him toward the ladder. “Abraham, there’s still time to mobilize the guard. Forget the aigamuxa.”

  Snarling, Regenzi tore his arm from Fredericks’s grasp. He fought to keep his voice level.

  “There’s time enough to get the aiga in place. All of you!” Regenzi shouted over the dissent rumbling through the rafters. “You’ve been well paid by my family, employed for two generations, made secure by my largesse. Your chieftain joined me in common cause and gave me his word you would follow where I lead. Preserve his honor, if he cannot be trusted to do it. Go!”

  Regenzi had been prepared for howls of derision—for more slithery laughter, for contempt, for rage.

  The silence that followed was far louder and more terrifying.

  Deacon Fredericks stood an arm’s length from the ladder, his ruddy, round face gone ashen.

  Moonlight slipped through the windows of the lower belfry tower, bleeding into shadows. They crawled down the stone walls, running over the pitched wooden floor, pooling around the heels of his boots as the aigamuxa descended.

  Nasrahiel stood beside the messenger. He tilted his eyeless head, thoughtful, almost puzzled.

  “Our common cause was finding the Nine,” the chieftain allowed. His voice had turned chillingly reasonable. “We needed the book and the reverend doctor. We needed you only to come this close.”

  The aigamuxa fell into place around Regenzi like withered fruit dropping from a skeleton tree. His shirt collar seemed unaccountably tight. He reached up to loosen it and found his fingers unable to work the button.

  Slowly, Abraham Regenzi remembered a question Revered Chalmers had asked.

  “Why are your people seeking the Nine, Nasrahiel?”

  The head tilted again, as if drawn by the same force pulling the aiga’s thin, black lips into a smile.

  “God made three intelligent races, equal in gifts, and scattered them in this world. Only Man has strived so hard to strike the other two down. He took the forests from the lanyani to make the cities of iron and lay the rails between them. He turned them into vagrants where once their roots drove deep. He took the aigamuxa, we who walk with our eyes on the earth of creation, and cast us in chains to do labor, because we are twisted brutes in his eyes. Man made us fit for the meanest tasks because he wishes to follow the Creator and live by knowledge and Reason, not the sweat of his brow. And then, when the world grew too large for every man to be a scholar, they had to give up their pride and return to the labors of old. So they turned us into the streets to act as the brutes we were taught to be.”

  Abraham Regenzi looked around the circle of blinking feet, their dagger gazes sharpened by servitude.

  “God created the Nine to prove the worth of Man,” Nasrahiel continued. “But my people have always known your worth, and we spit upon it. If the Nine are the witnesses, the test subjects, the pillars . . . Well. We will end the trial by killing those who would testify. God did not see fit to test
our people—did not see fit to test the lanyani. If Man is too weak to defend the Experiment that gives him purpose, he is judged and found wanting.”

  “I won’t deny your people have been ill-used by some,” Regenzi insisted. “But my father paid you. Paid your sire before you and all his tribe. You were never truly slaves to my house. And even for those others . . . For every man who whipped an aigamuxa in chains, there were ten ordinary men laboring beside them. You can’t paint us all with a slaver’s brush.”

  “Perhaps,” Nasrahiel allowed. “But even if some men never forged or latched a chain, even if the Nine themselves are guiltless, this world was still built upon my people’s backs. Is it so wrong that I should wish to rebuild it on humanity’s?”

  “Don’t waste your time with me, then,” Regenzi said. “You’ll need Chalmers to find the Nine. If this one is right—” he nodded toward the messenger, “—Meteron may already have freed him.”

  “Let them run. They are rats in a maze. There is only one sure way out. When they find it, they will be weary, and we will be ready.”

  “I gave you a path to finding Chalmers: you owe me something.”

  Nasrahiel nodded solemnly. “It is true. I owe you a debt for paving the path to my people’s satisfaction. I owe you, at least, your life.”

  Regenzi looked around at the crouching aigamuxa and swallowed. Deacon Fredericks’s gaze crossed his for a moment, and then he was gone, faster than a rabbit into the warren hole, scrabbling down the ladder to the clerestory below. Regenzi reached into his coat, his hand on the beastly gun taken from the Alchemist. His mind was racing to decide where to shoot first when Nasrahiel’s voice startled him back into focus.

  “I cannot raise a hand to you, in the name of this debt.” The chieftain stalked backward, shaking his head. “But my brothers owe the tribe the defense of its chieftain’s honor. I am sure you understand.”

  Nasrahiel disappeared into the shadows. Regenzi yanked at the gun, but it hooked in the sash adorning his coat. One of the aiga darted forward and struck him down with a forearm heavy as corded wood. His vision exploded in red light, and his mouth filled with hot, liquid copper. Regenzi heard the gun clatter to the ground, then spin away, kicked by the beast’s horny heel.

  The other aigamuxa lunged, closing the circle, stabbing inward. Regenzi had time only to see their shadows leaping about the belfry walls. And then his own voice, shrieking higher and longer and louder than anything he’d heard before, joined the sound of his arms tearing free of their sockets.

  33.

  “We need to take all of this,” Phillip Chalmers said. He stood before the trestle table of notes and papers, hugging a thick lab book. His eyes darted between Anselm and Rowena, as if he wasn’t sure from which quarter to expect resistance.

  Rowena snorted at the riot of materials. “How? The Alchemist’s bag is already full—with stuff we’d actually need.”

  She looked at Anselm for confirmation, her tear-stained face once more tough and canny. He wondered when she’d developed a notion of being his sidekick. Master Meteron and the Wonder Waif. Preposterous child.

  “The girl’s right,” Anselm agreed. “Carrying the book will be hard enough without taking the whole ruddy lab.”

  Chalmers wrung his hands. His eyes flicked toward the girl, the most overt of covert glances.

  Anselm pinched the bridge of his nose. “Rowena, keep by the door while we get this sorted.”

  She opened her mouth to protest.

  “I’m half deaf from all my years at gunplay,” Anselm said apologetically. “I need your ears on alert.”

  And that was all it took. The girl was humming with energy, past ready to be useful. Tell Rowena her pet Bear was still alive and she was ready to stand off in front of Nasrahiel barehanded. It was foolish energy, wasted confidence. It could very well get her killed—but for now, it had a use. She crouched by the locked gate, still as a pointing hound, and listened.

  Anselm felt Chalmers take him by the elbow. The reverend doctor spoke in a stage whisper, loud and painfully articulated.

  “The—notes—are—what—”

  Meteron fixed Chalmers with a withering look. “You’re a bloody idiot. Just keep your voice down, savvy?”

  The younger man blinked like a confused bird, and then, slowly, understanding crept over his features. He dropped Anselm’s arm.

  “Ohhh. Yes, I see. Terribly sorry.” Chalmers edged closer, conspiratorial. “You must know what the book is. That’s what brought you here.”

  “A powerful desire to do lots of killing brought me here, actually.”

  The doctor’s eyes widened.

  “But I suppose the book has its charm,” Anselm allowed. “Writes itself, hand of God, the Vautneks, all that.”

  Chalmers seemed disappointed. Then, gradually, the nervousness written in his features sloughed away. Underneath it rested a badly tailored solemnity, two sizes too large for his reedy frame.

  “Here.” He set the lab book down and opened it, turning pages until he reached its middle. “Seeing for yourself might help you appreciate the situation.”

  The page Chalmers selected was half-filled with lines of numbers, some in sets, some long, unbroken strings. An inky-black script crawled along on its own, then paused. The third line from the top was lanced by a strike-through, two notations made in the margin beside it in a blocky, serif-heavy hand. The bottom of the page began filling again, very slowly.

  Anselm felt something in him stir, old and better than half-forgotten. He had no words for the feeling trailing in its wake. It dwelled somewhere behind his breastbone and traveled down his arm to tingle in the tip of his phantom finger.

  He blinked at the page and leaned closer. “Those are coordinates.”

  Chalmers turned back several pages. “It’s His habit to step away from recording events and environmental details to confirm precise positioning—happens once a week, sometimes more. The coordinates are tied to other numbers that seem to identify persons relevant to the subject at hand, but I haven’t had the opportunity to test that theory. This section of the text refers to Subject Six.”

  Anselm put a hand on the page Chalmers was about to turn. The stump of his finger hovered over a sketch of streets and alleys, a grid.

  “That’s the Regency,” he murmured.

  “I don’t know what that—”

  “I live there.”

  Chalmers looked between the page and Anselm. He took a slow breath. “I’ve transcribed most of the last several days for each of the subjects. Subject Six has been the most active. Translating from the cryptograms is slow work. I do it in scratch through the notes. They show where she’s been, who she’s been with, what’s unfolding right now.”

  “She,” Anselm observed.

  “She.”

  Anselm nodded. He turned the pages, considered their notations. He found very little recognizable—but there were a few things. A sketch of the cellblock in Oldtemple. The lightning rail station at Ippining. Not much . . . but enough. He closed his eyes, suddenly very tired.

  There was a thump—Chalmers closing the book.

  “I need the notes,” the reverend said, voice low and resolute. “Leaving them behind would be like losing half the key for a cipher. Without the notes, working the text isn’t much more than educated guesswork.”

  “If we left the notes behind, would they reveal enough for Regenzi to follow her?”

  “Perhaps,” Chalmers whispered. “But it’s not a matter of Regenzi following her. It’s a matter of Nasrahiel killing her.” He looked furtively at Rowena’s backside. “He has plans of his own—something Regenzi’s blind to. I’m sure of it. He’s seen my maps and my notes of where the nearest subject has been these last few days. He knows where you have been. If he’s already seen she’s here . . .”

  Anselm stared at Rowena. The girl was hunkered down with her fingers twined in the grate’s lattice. She looked impossibly small—a dirty, desperate thing with her heart pi
nned to her sleeve. And she was as fierce and loyal as any wounded creature half-healed by an act of charity, yearning to be made whole. Born to a diet of fish broth and day-old bread, she’d called fleas her bedfellows, stolen flatware to pay a prison penury, and carried on her slim shoulders one-ninth weight of the human future.

  Anselm unpacked the Alchemist’s bag. He left behind the grappling fork and the four crank work grenades. For an uncertain moment, he held the surgeon’s kit in his hands, then put that aside, too.

  “Won’t somebody need that—perhaps?” Chalmers asked nervously.

  “Ever seen a battlefield surgery?”

  The younger man blinked. “Ah . . . no. Not my sort of thing, really.”

  “They happen after the dust settles. If we’re still here then, it’s because we’re already dead. Give me your damned papers. And, Chalmers?”

  “Yes?”

  Anselm’s eyes were hard. “I can keep my peace about the girl, if you can keep your nerve.”

  The reverend doctor nodded vigorously. “We can’t say a word to her. Not now. Not ever.”

  “Good.” He thrust the bag into the reverend doctor’s arms, staggering him. “It’s your rutting library. You carry it.”

  Rowena turned, her voice playfully cajoling. “Come on, Master Meteron. You gonna take all day?”

  Chalmers had been adjusting the bag across his chest. He abandoned the buckled strap and gaped at Anselm. “Wait . . . you’re Anselm Meteron? That Meteron? Your father—”

  “I know who my father is.” Anselm snatched the keys off a shelf and tossed them to Rowena. “You’ve got skinny arms, cricket. Get us out of here.”

  Rowena caught the keys one-handed and turned back toward the grating. She passed her arm through just in time to find herself looking three EC guards right in the brass buttons of their coats.

  “Bugger me,” she groaned.

  The guard standing nearest the grating snared her wrist. He shoved her back, then jerked forward, driving her face into the door. Rowena cried out and fell in a heap, hands covering her eyes.