by Martin Kee
“Vin gave me the keys to the clinic,” she says, hearing the words as if someone else is speaking them. She can see the expressions on their faces, the eyes turning to one another, exchanging glances of worry and concern. “He left it to me.”
“That’s a lie,” screams an elderly woman from the back. Her hair stands on end, grafted from some large ground-crawling mammal. “Why would he leave it to you? She probably killed Vin and stole the keys.”
It takes a lot to raise her voice above the mob. “This is the note of inheritance.” She holds up the small paper in a hand. It’s not that she even wants the place, but without Vin here to help her she has little chance of keeping Scoop alive at all.
“I can patch. I’m trained in it. This creature is my Ward.”
Laughter and some noisy conversations follow as Den’k approaches and looks at the inheritor note. “This changes nothing. You do not have the authority.”
“I have this note.”
“I could take it.”
“In front of everyone?” she says, holding him in her gaze. “You willfully break the law in front of your entire town?”
Others take notice of the note as well, a yard full of witnesses. She doesn’t wait any longer for fear of losing momentum. She turns, and climbs onto a nearby crate, raising her voicesong so that all can hear.
“I claim this creature as Ward of the Tenders’ Guild, under the authority vested in me, as sole surviving member of the Tender House On Bone Sea.”
Murmurs flow through the crowd, and as she looks back at Den’k she can see he is furious. He spits his words.
“You have no authority here! I am law.”
“You’re a patrician,” says one female with large fins along her back. “You were duly elected to represent this town, and I don’t very much like the idea of you presenting us as a bunch of liars. I saw the inheritance note as did everyone here. She’s said the words, she’s claimed her Ward. I, like many here, owe my life to the Tenders and I’ll not stand here and watch you deny her.”
“And what of the Ameer?” Den’k says, turning in a circle.
“The Ameer can make decisions based on facts.” A tall farmer, his hand shaped like a bone spade speaks up. “If Bex is truly breaking the law, then he will see that when his representatives arrive. If she is being true, I would rather not be on the wrong side of Ameer law.”
Den’k hears the fluting songs of agreement and looks back up at Bex, his voice low. “Well, Tr-Bex, you have your Ward. And now you have a clinic and land. Would you care to take anything else? Perhaps move into my mansion? Collect donations from the community?”
“No,” she says. “This is all I wanted, and all that’s right.”
He spits his answer, his voice full of venom. “Then we’ll see when the time comes.”
“Who will run the clinic?” another resident asks, his voice a contralto aria.
“I will,” Bex says. “The Guild trains all of us in the practice of Patching as well as Tending. We are nurturers, not a bunch of savages, no matter what Den’k here would have you believe. Scoop is under my protection now. I carry the authority within me until an elder to me in the guild states otherwise. Den’k you know this is law as well as I do.”
Bex watches the crowd, trying to gauge their response. They aren’t making any move to attack or she figures she’d be dead already. But the reception is far from acceptance.
She hears footsteps and turns to see Veerh limping back towards them. He glares at her and up at Scoop, holding his side with one arm. He’s bleeding and several of his grafted pincer arms are bent the wrong way. Scoop spins to look at him, but Bex jumps in front of him. “Scoop! Just stop.”
“SCOOP!” The giant says, its voice like a boat whistle. “SCOOP!”
It isn’t until she turns back to the crowd that she sees the effect it has on them. They turn to one another, uttering low conversations and pointing up at the giant.
“He possesses writing and words as well. He can say his name. As a Tender it is my duty to take him under my protection.”
Den’k glowers at her from behind his lenses as Veerh steps over to stand beside him. “You’re making a very poor decision here, Tr-Bex,” he says. “What will you tell the scavenger crew when they arrive with orders from the Ameer. Do you plan to bring this village into a war?”
“Under the laws of the Tender Guild, Scoop is my Ward. They can take that back to the Ameer. As for me…” She walks over to Veerh and studies the wounds. “I can probably fix you up. I know Vin kept a supply of patches in his pantry. I still need to familiarize myself with them. As for Scoop, he helped me rebuild all this.”
As she studies Veerh’s wounds, she catches a glimpse of movement from the corner of her eye. People have begun circling Scoop curiously, their weapons and farm tools lowered as they stare up at him. Scoop in turn is staring back, his posture guarded, but no longer completely panicked. She breathes a small sigh of relief as Veerh leans in to whisper in her ear.
“And when they arrive, do you think they will just turn around empty handed?” he asks.
“No,” she says, wrapping a cloth around one of the limbs. “But if I can make people less afraid there is a chance they too will understand.”
“Understand what?” the soldier asks. “You think poachers will understand anything but profit?”
“Understand that he can be trained. That he is probably smarter than we give him credit for.” She meets his eyes, black as oil. That he is from somewhere else, some place we can’t imagine. “He can be trained to fight as well.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Veerh says and winces as the bandage goes taut over the wound. “You might have to teach him to fight sooner than you like.”
“I was thinking you could train him,” she says, but her voice trails off as she reads further into his expression. There is a sort of defeated sadness there from the old warrior as he stares back at her.
“I am not up for fighting,” Veerh says. “The gate guards are but children. When the scavenger crew arrives you will stand little chance without some muscle to back up your claim.”
There’s something he’s not telling her, and as Bex leans in towards him, she can already hear the approaching hooves of orehorses and rolling carts. “It’s not a scavenger crew, is it?”
Veerh winces again and this time his eyes are unfocused as they look down at her. Internal bleeding. He’s going to faint, she thinks. As he slips from her grasp, Bex looks past the crowd, onto the village street to see the dust rising up, obscuring the Horns of the World. The silhouettes that emerge are ragged and dirty, their feral faces peering out at her, at the town. It isn’t until the poachers move closer that she realized one of them is wearing a strange hat, shaped almost exactly like Scoop’s face.
Chapter 17
IT’S ALL happening too fast.
“Poachers!” she almost spits the word as they arrive. The ground shakes under her feet and Bex turns to see Scoop backing up, nearly tripping over the fence. She can’t run to him because Veerh is slipping through her arms. The soldier is heavy with muscle and armor, and if it weren’t for a couple of nearby residents helping her, she’d drop him entirely. They lay him down on the ground and she yells to him, but his eyes are fluttering. Hoof beats approach, growing louder.
She looks up at Den’k and something clicks in her mind. “You told them?” she asks the patrician, almost disbelieving. “You knew he would send poachers… or did you request them specifically?”
“Poachers are scavengers, Tr-Bex of Bone Sea. Take one look at them and you can see that. They will do as well as anyone for this job.”
“But Scoop is under my protection…” Her voice trails off as she sees the smug expression through those lenses.
“That may be all well and good, Tr-Bex, but poachers do not follow your Tender laws, nor do they follow the general laws of the Ameer’s region. You may find yourself at a disadvantage should you try and resist.”
&n
bsp; “Or what?” She stares up at him in disbelief.
“Poachers obtain their wares however they see fit. I imagine if they cannot obtain what they want, they will obtain it from the next available source.”
It seems unimaginable to her that anyone would let poachers near a village, but it isn’t until she sees the torches and blades that she remembers all to well what had happened to the last village, and to Farren. She turns again to Den’k as he watches her intently, searching for any act that might allow him to leverage his position and have her arrested.
“You brought poachers to this town,” she says very slowly, watching her words. “Let that be on your head, Den’k. I’ve seen what they do to villages, and don’t think your bargain will somehow save this one.”
“And why is that?” He turns his head to the side. “Do you think their interests might have something to do with you?”
Bex’s heart seems to all at once expand and contract as a cold chill runs through her spine. “You told them I was here?”
“I told the Ameer that a member of the Tender’s Guild was being harbored here. One from Bone Sea, and a pupil of the late Tr-Farren as well. Oh, he seemed very interested in that.”
She manages one solid punch to his face before Trith’en is there, holding the prod out in front of him. The gland at the end sizzles with static, its mucus dripping onto her foot. They lock eyes for only a moment before the ground shakes again, and Bex turns to see Scoop. He’s backed to the edge of the town now—
*
He sees the approaching band of salamander-things. At first it’s just another group of the weird little gnomes approaching on their small horses. It’s gotten to the point where he’s used to it, but it’s when they emerge from the dust that he begins to see other familiar shapes as well. Teeth dangle from ropes and necklaces, clacking as they ride. They are teeth from every dentist’s office he has ever been in, the roots visible. They swing freely from the riders’ necks like charms.
Once something is seen it’s very hard to un-see it.
And it’s this fact that comes so clearly to mind as he watches the riders approach, feeling his feet slide back away from the growing mob and the surrounding farm. At first he isn’t quite sure why he’s feeling so afraid, until he sees the strange little hat one of them wears. The scalp has been removed directly above the nose, and fitted quite nicely with stitching around the hairline, giving the small creature a second face—a human face. It flops in the wind with the movement of the mount. The little salamander underneath the hat wears a tunic of large scales, slightly curved and bigger than the tooth, sewn together to form a vest made entirely of finger and toe nails.
They approach, a caravan of cannibals, with their rope made of hair, their clothes made of skin, and their helmets made of carved bone. Not all of it is entirely human—there are jaws and teeth, fangs and claws that could come from any assortment of nightmare creatures Kendal hasn’t encountered yet—but there are enough human parts in the mix to make him question two things. His little friend is perhaps not his friend at all. Perhaps they’ve simply been using him until these guys arrived. But another question nags him internally, gnawing at his guts until he wants to scream: Just how many other humans have crashed here? And how many are even left?
A shaking hand goes to his oxygen and straps the mask to his face. He’s going to need all the air he can get if he is to start—
*
Racing towards the distant forest. Bex calls out to him, but Scoop is gone, just like that. The colossal creature leaps the fence, shaking the ground, its ungainly legs carrying it away and over the hills before she can even say his name. When she turns, Den’k is giving her a petulant look, the townsfolk glaring at her, hands and claws gripping their weapons even tighter.
“The Ameer will not be pleased with this,” Den’k says, rubbing his jaw. You’ve not only violated Ameer law, but now you’ve gotten Veerh killed.”
“He’s not dead.” She leans down. The old soldier is hardly breathing, but still alive. “Someone help me get him to the operating room. The clinic. Please.”
She scans the crowd from face to face as they look from her to Veerh, their faces uncertain under the quickly changing tide of events. She meets eyes that stare back at her coldly, while others simply turn away, and Bex begins to grab Veerh’s legs herself when the crowd parts.
The girl is small, her skin still soft and ungrafted, wearing a green tunic and brown pants that seem too tight on her body. There is only a hint of her parent’s hand losing grip on her shoulder as she steps forward in front of the axes and pitchforks, her dark eyes gazing down at Bex. “Let me help.”
Bex only nods as the two of them begin to try and move Veerh to the clinic. Den’k watches her in slight disbelief as the hoof beats grow louder, slowing in a cloud of dust behind the crowd. More people part as others come forward to help, placing arms beneath Veerh to lift him.
“Thank you,” she says to one of them, a tall male with a flat bone hand for planting and reaping. But he doesn’t meet her eyes.
“Thank me later. I just don’t want to see him die. He’s been good to the village in this form. We’d lose a valuable Preserver with him gone, and I don’t want to live under an Ameer-decreed substitute.”
She winces inwardly at the rebuke. The message is clear: they don’t like her, don’t trust her, but she is useful, only needed until she is not.
“I’ll fix him,” she says. “I’m trained.”
“You just do whatever you need to do,” he says. “But if he dies, I suggest you leave quickly and under the cover of night.”
They are nearly under the awning of the clinic back porch when more figures emerge from the mob, and Bex knows immediately that they are not here to help at all. The tall one wears a tooth around his neck, one too large to be any of her kind. She has a pretty good idea where the decorations came from. Others emerge behind him, their arms grafted with spears and blow-guns. They approach at a brisk pace, upon them before she even gets inside the door.
“Great,” she says. “Help me get him inside.”
“Where is the colossus?” the tall one asks.
“Who are you?”
“I am Ak’klin, Huntmaster of the East. There is word of a colossus in your village.”
“He’s mine. He is my Ward.”
The poacher grins at her with sharp grafted fangs, his face ridged with horns and his shoulders with spikes, still crusting from recent acquisition. “He is the property of the Ameer, I’m afraid.”
“Well, the Ameer can kiss my ass,” she says and continues carrying Veerh to the door, but a sharp pain grips her arm, yanking her away. Veerh, almost falls, and would if not for the others. He moans, his breath rattling and bubbling in his chest. “Hey!”
“You will come with us,” says the poacher, pulling her away. He is immensely strong, his muscles and limbs grafted from predators, his grip like a bone vice. The clinic slips away and she sees furrows in the dirt where her feet have been dragged. “Where did the colossus go?”
His voicesong is sharp and staccato in her ears, the tone one of controlled annoyance that could easily blossom into anger.
“I don’t know,” she says. “And you can’t have him anyway. I am a student of the Tenders’ Guild, and I claimed him as my Ward.”
One of his troop laughs as Ak’klin says, “The Tenders’ Guild is no more, youngling. There are likely few more of you than of this beast you’ve let escape.”
A coldness seeps into her stomach and for a moment, Bex wonders if she will simply pass out. She envisions her gun, resting inside one of Bindo’s pouches, but there is simply no way to get it now and even if she did, Bex cannot remember how many bullets she has remaining. She might as well be bound in chain to this poacher.
Wouldn’t have this problem if I had a grafted weapon. But then I suppose they would just chop off my whole arm. “Then I speak on behalf of the Tenders’ Guild On Bone Sea, as the remaining holder of my legacy�
��”
Her song falls on ears of stone, the poacher dragging her back along the ground, until they are in front of the barn again.
“If you will not deliver to us the beast we have been sent to retrieve, we will collect an equivalent bounty to bring back with us.”
For a moment, she is confused, staring at the barn doors. Scoop isn’t in there. He’s in the forest. And it isn’t until she hears Bindo’s long wail that she really begins to struggle. The shorter poacher emerges from the barn, pulling Bindo by his harness. The plainsteer bucks and fights, his soft eyes white in fear at the edges. Bex wants to reach for him, to comfort him, but every movement sends sharp pain up her arm. Something wet and warm drips onto her hand and she realizes that she is bleeding from Ak’klin’s grip.
“You take us to him,” Ak’klin says. “Or Pim here will cut your plainsteer’s throat. We bring you and him back in a heap and take what we can get from the Ameer.”
She stares at Bindo’s terrified eyes, and after a few moments, Bex nods.
Chapter 18
THEY WALK as a troop, Bex in the front, Bindo dragged reluctantly behind them as they cross the desert into the forest that grows along the creek feeding into the town. The footsteps Scoop has left are big enough she could find him on her own and she doesn’t even have training in tracking prey. But that’s not why they want her. They want her for bait.
“Call to him,” Ak’klin asks, his grafted hands pinning her wrists together. “What is his name? Scoop? Call to him.”
“No.”
“Call to him.”
“Go burn.”
“Call to him or we will begin by killing your plainsteer,” he says and yanks her arm painfully.
“Scoop!” she calls into the forest.
The forest is actually an ancient, abandoned grove, the plants grafted to one another in an attempt to provide new kinds of fruits. But in this case, the experiment has proven a failure centuries ago, the plants bearing only small pods that even now rot uneaten on the ground. It’s something she’s seen over and over with grafting communities, farming in ways that seem great in theory, only to leave dust in their wake. The plants arch over them, becoming denser the deeper they travel. The pods are gummy, leaving slick trails where other animals have stepped on them. Nothing eats these, and by the smell, Bex imagines nothing ever will. It’s the reason this forest will remain here, spreading incrementally, its pods falling only an arm’s length from the trees rather than being carried far by animals.