A Quantum Mythology

by Gavin G. Smith

  ‘Aim for the—’ he cried out as the sledgehammer hit him in the back. His leather coat hardened, as did his skin, but it wasn’t enough. Agony shot up his spine. The force of the blow staggered him and he collapsed to his knees as the breath exploded from his lungs. Behind him one of the human marionettes raised the sledgehammer high above its head to cave in the Hellaquin’s skull. His diaphragm, aided by his ‘gift’, shook off its paralysis and he sucked air into his lungs again. He put both hands on the ground and kicked up, hitting his attacker in the chest. Ribs broke and the marionette was thrown backwards on its chains. The Hellaquin dropped his bow and pushed himself to standing.

  ‘Aim for the scorpions in their eyes!’ he shouted as he ducked under another sledgehammer swing. The Hellaquin had a short sword in each hand now. He took a rapid step forward and thrust the right-hand sword through the human marionette’s skull, pinioning the brass scorpion and pushing it out through the other side of the human puppet’s head.

  ‘Aim for the scorpions!’ the Knight shouted. ‘I’m going after—’

  Whatever the Knight had intended to say was drowned out by a pistol shot, followed by another in quick succession. The Hellaquin had a moment to look up towards a catwalk at the other end of the Manufactory. He could just make out a dark figure wreathed in pistol smoke, then the figure fired the pepperbox pistol again.

  Silas kept firing the pepperbox pistol as the Knight leaped past one of his marionettes and onto the stairs leading to the winch platform upon which he stood. He knew he was hitting the Knight – he saw the man stagger more than once – but still he kept coming.

  He was sure he knew the man. He had seen him before, walking out of his father’s burning workshop covered in blood. He screamed as he fired again. The man stumbled back against the wall. One of Silas’s marionettes landed in front of the man, swinging a huge spanner at him. The man ducked and sparks flew off the brick wall. Silas had to concede that the chains might have been a mistake, regardless of how much he liked the idea of human marionettes. The blond, blue-eyed man jumped up and, with little finesse but surprising force, he severed one of the marionette’s arms, then the other, and then one of its legs. His puppet’s torso fell forwards, leaving limbs dangling from the chains.

  Silas fired again and was rewarded with a spray of blood from the man’s head. The pepperbox pistol was empty now. He laid it neatly on the workbench in front of him, in its place among his other tools.

  The Knight’s blond hair was matted with blood by the time he reached the top of the stairs and faced Silas on the winch platform. As Silas watched, the blood was already disappearing from the Knight’s hair. That was when he realised the man was just like him. He had the will to control demons and do great works. However, he also recognised the look on the Knight’s face as he approached with a red and naked blade in his hand. This man wanted – no, hungered – to take his life.

  The Knight moved with frightening speed, but so could Silas. Hot broken glass and iron nails hit the blond man in the face and chest as the blunderbuss kicked back into Silas’s shoulder. As the smoke cleared, Silas found himself disappointed. He expected to see the Knight’s chest a crimson ruin and his head all but gone. Instead the man’s chest looked fine, but where his face had been there was now a skull painted red that opened its mouth so blood could bubble out. Skin and flesh were already starting to creep around from the back of the blond man’s head.

  Good, Silas thought, I can take my time with this one. He put the blunderbuss down on the workbench, in the right place, and reached for his blades just as he remembered the other man on the ground floor. He looked up as the broad-head arrow caught him in the throat and passed through, two feet of ash pinioning him to the brick wall behind him. Silas reached for it as blood ran down the shaft. He spat blood out of his mouth, more surprised than anything else.

  The Hellaquin didn’t waste a moment to check the effects of his shot. He nocked another arrow, drew and loosed, then fired again at a marionette swinging towards him, his ability and ‘gift’ guiding the shot. The marionette slumped dead in its chains, the side of its head a ruin. He spun. Behind him, yet another marionette was running towards him, almost too close to fire on. He loosed and the human puppet hit the ground, sliding over the stone. Something leaped from the marionette’s head and skittered under a boiler. Then there was no more movement. Not down on the workshop floor, anyway.

  The Hellaquin glanced up to the winch platform. His ‘gift’ made Silas look much closer than he actually was and he could see the killer drooling blood as he inched forwards on the arrow shaft. The Hellaquin drew his penultimate arrow from inside his coat. It was a broad-head.

  The broad-head caught the killer in the chest and drove him back into the wall again. The Hellaquin reached the stairs to the winch platform and started climbing them as he drew the final arrow. He’d hollowed the head of this arrow and filled it with his own blood. He’d told the devils in the blood to do one thing and one thing only: to seek out others like them and kill.

  The Hellaquin stopped for a moment to look down at the Knight as the other man struggled to regrow enough of his mind to be capable of movement. The Hellaquin stepped over him. He wasn’t going to shoot the killer from a distance. He was going to ram the arrow straight through his heart.

  Silas continued trying to pull himself off the arrows pinning him to the wall as the big archer approached him. Every movement caused agony to reverberate through him as he inched along the shafts.

  The archer was standing in front of him now, bow raised and arrow nocked, ready to plunge into Silas’s heart. Silas spat his blood into the archer’s face and gave the devils in his blood the order to eat.

  The archer started screaming. He dropped his bow, hands flying to his face as the blood started to consume skin, flesh and eyes, overwhelming the archer’s own defences.

  With a scream, Silas wrenched himself off the arrows, already starting to heal. The archer staggered back, much of the skin on his face gone, revealing the musculature underneath. Silas lurched to the workbench and grabbed one of his knives. A heavy knife for butchering meat, he’d modified it to include a ring for his finger where the blade met the hilt. He had a pair of them.

  Knife in hand, Silas turned on the archer. He pulled the archer’s hands away from his diminishing face and slit the man’s throat. That act would normally involve some sawing, but Silas’s superior strength and the sharpness of the blade allowed him to do it in one deft cut. The archer grabbed at his throat as blood bubbled out. Silas’s own neck wound was already starting to heal.

  The killer carefully placed his bloodied knife on the workbench, next to the virgin steel of its twin, and picked up another item. He remembered when his father taught him that people were like clockwork. You could take them apart quite easily.

  Silas walked around behind the archer and stepped on the back of the man’s knee, forcing him to the ground. He grabbed his long hair and used it to force the archer’s head sideways onto the workbench. The man tried to fight him with one red-coloured hand. Silas released the archer’s hair and grasped the handle of the bone guillotine. There was sickening crunch as Silas’s strength forced the guillotine’s curved blade through the archer’s skull and sliced off the top of the other man’s head. The archer stopped struggling. Silas moved the body into a limp kneeling position. He looked around for something in which to collect the blood seeping from the neck wound, but found nothing.

  I will have his knowledge, Silas thought. I will have his power. Strong fingers scooped out the archer’s brain matter and Silas started to consume it. He managed to swallow one mouthful before he stopped. He shuddered, spat blood and grey matter out of his mouth, and then the tip of a sabre exploded out of his chest.

  ‘I enjoyed killing your father,’ the Knight whispered in his ear. Silas cursed himself for a fool. He had got far too carried away with the kill.

 
Du Bois wrenched the sabre out of Silas Scab. His face still burned and ached; it would be red and raw as he regrew it. The killer spun away from him with surprising vigour for a man who had just been run through, and du Bois suspected that Silas’s healing ability was even better than his and the Hellaquin’s. Du Bois advanced on Silas, stepping over the Hellaquin’s body. He was sure the archer was dead, his ability to heal overwhelmed by the damage inflicted by Silas.

  Scab grabbed a pair of knives from the workbench, one already bloody, the other clean. Du Bois held his left arm across his body, the tanto all but concealed in his left hand. The sabre flicked out lightning-fast at Silas. Silas backed away, parrying as best as he could with the long knives. The killer relied on speed and strength, du Bois on skill and hundreds of years of experience. It was a short fight.

  Silas saw his moment. He stepped inside the Knight’s guard, one blade ready to deflect the sabre, the other to cut into his opponent. To start to take him apart as his father had taught him. For his father. Steel rasped on steel as he turned the sabre aside. His keen blade bit deep into the Knight’s left arm, eliciting a grunt of pain. Too late, Silas saw the tanto. Folded steel sliced into the killer’s skin, cutting through it even as it tried to harden to armour. The chisel-like tip of the knife forced between his ribs.

  Du Bois screamed with exertion as he rammed the blade with sheer strength through rib bones, cutting downwards in a C-shape to the stomach before blood made the hilt of the blade too slick to hold and he lost his grip on it. Silas dropped both of his blades. Du Bois kicked the killer in the chest, causing more of his innards to spill out, and Silas stumbled back and slipped on his own entrails.

  The Knight stood over the killer. Silas stared up at him. He did not like pain – that was for others. It was nearly intolerable, but it was seeping out of him now. He felt real hatred for the man standing over him, but found he had nothing to say.

  Du Bois ran the sabre through the killer’s heart and left it there. He might still have the ability to heal, but not with the blade in the wound.

  He spared a moment to look down at the Hellaquin. He despised archers as a breed. Filthy creatures who spread disease by covering their arrowheads with their own excrement and killed good horse, all because they were too lazy to learn to fight properly, and too cowardly to confront their enemies face to face.

  Du Bois stepped over the body and went to retrieve his pistols. He holstered one and started reloading the other. He had a special pistol ball for Silas. It was hollow and filled with the Knight’s blood, designed specifically to seek out and kill whatever dwelt in the blood of other immortals. He had mainly used its like to hunt down and kill agents of the Brass City.

  ‘Malcolm?’ The voice was quiet and incredibly deep. Du Bois glanced behind him. Two people were standing there. They had passed unnoticed through the blood wards he had left in the air.

  ‘Mr Brown,’ du Bois said to the taller of the two strange figures. His skin was as near black as du Bois had ever seen, yet Mr Brown did not have African features. He was a little under six and a half feet tall, dressed in understated, dark-coloured finery. He carried an elegant silver-tipped dark-wood cane. In his other hand was the always-present and ornately carved opium pipe. As du Bois watched, Mr Brown took a long draw from the pipe. As far as du Bois could see, Mr Brown derived little pleasure from the opium and it never noticeably affected him. His appearance was so singular that du Bois always wondered why he had such a hard time remembering what Mr Brown looked like.

  Next to him was the Pennangalan, one of the infamous twin cannibal queens of the South Pacific who claimed to be heirs to something called the Khmer Empire. Du Bois looked around. He was surprised to see the Pennangalan without her sister. Perhaps rumours of her twin returning to the Pacific were true after all.

  She wore a featureless mask of beaten silver that covered her entire face. Her long black hair was gathered in a ponytail, which in turn was secured in a loop that reminded du Bois of a hangman’s noose. She wore a loose shirt and trousers, and soft-soled hide boots. What little skin that remained on show was either intricately tattooed, tanned or weather-beaten. A curved, sabre-like dao hung from a scabbard on her belt. She also carried a pair of dha-hmyaung daggers and a brace of ornate flintlocks, their barrels carved into the shape of serpents’ maws. Du Bois had once heard tell that the sisters’ blood came from the mythical Naga themselves, and that Mr Brown had given them the choice of working for the Circle or being destroyed.

  The Pennangalan pushed past du Bois and walked over to where Silas lay on the wooden boards of the winch platform.

  ‘Leave him,’ du Bois told her as he rammed the ball into the barrel of his pistol. The Pennangalan ignored du Bois and dragged the sabre out of Silas’s body. ‘And don’t touch my sword.’ Du Bois’ sabre clattered to the ground.

  Life returned explosively to Silas and he dragged in a long, rasping breath. The Pennangalan used a foot to keep him down on the boards.

  ‘This man is a sickness. There is no requirement for his continued existence,’ du Bois said as he primed the pistol.

  ‘There is no requirement that you can see,’ Mr Brown said softly. ‘The Circle feels otherwise. He will be put in a place where he can do no harm.’

  ‘Why?’ du Bois asked.

  Mr Brown spread his arms apologetically, indicating that he either did not know or could not tell him.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not good enough.’ Du Bois felt rather than heard the Pennangalan shifting position behind him.

  A rasping, wet laugh arose from Silas. ‘I’m going to enjoy killing you,’ he mocked. ‘You want there to be a reason. There isn’t. You want me to be different from you. I am. I admit that I kill for pleasure. You pretend to kill for power.’ Mr Brown was gesturing for Silas to be quiet. ‘You pretend to be righteous, but we know the truth, you and I, don’t we?’

  It was too much for du Bois. He swung around, cocking the pistol as he turned. He was aware of the flare from a muzzle flash in the ceiling beams at the other end of the Manufactory. Then he heard the sound of the shot. The etched, saboted bullet hit him in the back right where his heart was. His clothing and skin were too slow to harden and the bullet went straight through him as the Pennangalan brought her dao down. The pistol and his hand fell to the wooden boards of the winch platform.

  Du Bois hit the wall and slid down it. He felt himself being turned over. Mr Brown was standing over him with an expression of sadness on his entirely forgettable face.

  ‘Why are you always so wilful, Malcolm?’ he asked. Behind him the Pennangalan was helping Silas off the winch platform.

  Du Bois knew he would heal but it still felt like dying. Mr Brown bowed his head and closed his eyes as if he was praying, and then he turned and walked away. Du Bois cried out as he felt his knowledge of these events disappear as if they were being slowly stolen. Tears sprang from blue eyes.

  Outside the Manufactory the American joined them. His long-barrelled rifle was slung across his back. The Pennangalan was helping Silas into a luxurious black coach with an interior of upholstered red leather. It was pulled by four powerful-looking black horses.

  ‘He’s right – that creature is scum,’ the American said.

  ‘I am going to hide him from the sight of all good people,’ Mr Brown said. ‘Even you.’

  The American looked sceptical, but he climbed up onto the driver’s seat as Mr Brown entered the carriage and took another deep draw on his pipe. He didn’t see the look of fear on Silas’s face.

  5

  A Long Time After the Loss

  The Monk strode through the passages of the immersion monastery. The door to the monastic cell gave her a moment’s trouble, but she had the Lazerene’s AI override the lockout codes on the contemplation immersion.

  The handle of the thick, iron-reinforced door felt cold against her calloused palm as it turned, and she
stepped into the cramped stone cell. It was windowless, the only furniture a crude cot on the floor against one of the walls. Brother Benedict was kneeling, his cassock stripped down to the waist. His body was covered with tattooed equations describing fifth-dimensional thought experiments. He looked like he was praying, but observing the equations on his skin change, the Monk knew that his solitary contemplation was an opportunity to use his neunonics software to work on a number of extra-dimensional physics problems.

  ‘No,’ Benedict said quietly. He had the accepted body sculpt of a physically fit base male seen all across Known Space, though part of his tonsure betrayed a receding hairline that he wasn’t vain enough to hide. The Monk knew that Benedict had had the same cold, dead eyes as his father until he’d had them redesigned.

  ‘I’m sorry, Benedict.’

  ‘You may have me backed up here but that’s twice now he’s killed me. I don’t enjoy the experience.’

  ‘If it’s any consolation, Scab has killed me once as well.’

  ‘It’s not.’

  ‘The first time was your own fault. You were hunting him.’

  ‘I designed my own psycho-surgical procedures after that. I changed my mind so I wasn’t like that any more. I was doing a lot of combat drugs back then.’