by Anton Strout
“How you holding up there, big fella?” the human asked.
“Holding up . . . ?” I replied, unsure of the expression. At best I guessed that it most likely was one of the “idioms” Alexandra and her friends had promised to teach me about long ago. “You are the one holding me up by the very spikes you personally drove through my wings.”
“You’ll be fine, golem,” he said. “They can patch you up with a little quick-setting cement or something.”
“I do not thing my father will be letting me down,” I said. “I refuse to give him what he asks.”
“I know this hurts you, creature,” he said. “Even if you’re just a construct. I’ve studied what little there is out there in the world about your kind.”
“What could you possibly know of my kind?” I asked. “I am the only one of my kind.”
“You’d be surprised,” he said. “As far as what I do know . . .” The sound of the chain hanging off to my right rang out, and my right wing exploded with a fresh wave of pain as the spike pulled me farther up on one side only, leaving my left foot on the ground. I twisted and turned as I dangled there.
“I know you can be hurt,” he continued. “They’ve paid me to hurt you. To get what they want. So why don’t you save us both the time and trouble and give them what they ask for? They’re going to get it anyway, thanks to me.”
“You will not break me,” I said, still swinging back and forth. “What makes you think you can?”
“I have a few tricks up my sleeve,” he said, and stepped into the circle of light. A blond-haired human stared at me with a dark curiosity, his hand darting into the pocket of the long brown coat he wore. It came free holding an assortment of thin metal vials, reminding me of the kind my maker used to use.
Somewhere off in the darkened cargo hold, a door swung open, and the man turned away from me to see who it was.
I grabbed for him—for them—which only spun me around in place, missing the man completely.
“Now, now,” my father’s voice called from off across the hold, his steps ringing out as he crossed to us. “You would not start this without me, would you? I am paying, after all.”
“Jesus,” came another voice from off in my father’s direction. Alexandra’s brother, Devon. “Save a piece for the boss, will ya?”
The human backed away from me, sliding the vials inside the folds of his coat. “I wouldn’t dream of doing any of this without you,” the stranger said. “Just continuing to wear down his will.”
“Excellent,” Kejetan said. “Do you have everything you need to extract the information I desire?”
“I think so,” the stranger said. “Although it’s getting harder and harder to get the supplies I need to do so.”
“I am not concerned about how you procure them. Only that you do.”
“I’m just saying.” The stranger stepped out of the light, and moments later the full but dim lights of the hold came to life. A tray covered with vials, metal flasks, and an array of various stoppered containers sat against the near wall where the man stood. “Basic theories of economic supply and demand in play here, there might be a slight price increase on this job.”
My father crossed to him. His deformed stone bulk stood towering over the man, who backed up against the wall, craning his head up to meet my father’s face.
“Do not test me,” Kejetan said. “While money is of little concern to me, do not think me the sort to be taken advantage of.”
“I’m not taking advantage,” the man said, sounding almost insulted.
His words were met with a silent stillness from my father. Even hanging where I was, I felt the intimidation of it.
The man’s face fell, his eyes shifting away.
“Okay, maybe I’m taking a little advantage,” he said. “But I’m not kidding about the supply. There’s a risk factor, and the last time, I was nearly caught.”
“Again, not my concern,” my father said, stepping away from him to inspect me where I hung.
The man turned back to his table, placing his hands on several of the vials and flasks. “It will be your concern,” he said, lifting them up one by one, “when the last of the vials is used, and there’s nothing left. Everything I do relies on one master component, Kimiya, mixed with others. And right now, Kimiya is in short supply. No one’s making it anymore. No one knows how. There’s a finite supply available to me, and no offense, I have other clients and customers to think of as well as my own future.”
Devon walked over to him, laying his own heavy, deformed stone hand on the man’s shoulder. “Trust me, pal. If there’s one thing I learned when I was human and doing business, it’s that it’s hard to think about the future if the deal you fuck up today gets you killed. You might want to play nice with his lordship there.”
The fire in the man’s eyes died. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “No worries. Just wanted to make him aware of how hard I’ve been working to help him. No need to get excited.”
Devon patted him, the man’s face more pained with each jarring blow to his shoulder, fragile creature that these humans were.
“That’s the spirit,” Devon said, and walked to join my father in front of me.
“Hoist him up so he’s even,” the blond human said, and Devon crossed over to the left chain hanging from the ceiling. He pulled at it, a twinge of pain erupting all along my left wing until I had both feet lifted just off the ground and was hanging evenly.
The man came to me with one of the larger containers, pulling off the top of it, and began moving all around me. Consulting a notebook he pulled from his coat pocket, he walked around me, marking my stone body with his finger, the thick red liquid forming arcane symbols in a language I could not read. In the stretched pain of my body, the sensation was cooling, almost refreshing.
So close he was as he worked, yet I had not the fight in me to even lift a clawed hand to stop him. Nor did I wish to. Pain I could endure, if it meant that no harm would come to Alexandra and her friends. Her great-great-grandfather’s rules—to protect the Belarus family—might have been expelled from my being, but the desire to do so had not been. Whatever Kejetan and his men would do to me, I would endure.
After several more moments of this, the man stepped back from me, a pleased expression on his face.
“Is it ready?” my father asked him.
“Pretty much,” the man said, reaching into one of the deep, outside pockets of his coat with the hand not holding the flask. “Now to bind it.” He pulled free a battered black notebook, thick with well-worn pages, flipping through it until he found what he was seeking. His eyes met mine as he let out a long, slow breath, then he lifted the flask to his lips and drank.
His face twisted into a mask of displeasure, and for a moment he looked like he might fall over, but instead he forced his eyes open and looked to the notebook, reading from it. The words came out of his mouth in a soft, steady stream, and while I could not understand them, I did feel a connection snap to between the two of us, an invisible burning cord that stretched from his mind to mine.
The pain of it was far different from the physical one I had been contending with all this time.
This kind was far worse.
Only the distant memory of my human form being crushed to death centuries ago seemed even close to this excruciation. It was as if the very thoughts in my head burned. I opened my mouth to beg for it to stop, trying to fight it, but the only sound that came from my lips was a roar that echoed around the cargo hold, my father and Devon stepping back from it.
Although I thought that the violent sound coming from me would have torn a human apart, the man before me held his ground. He, too, looked pained, but his face was full of concentration, and it did not waver with even a hint of change.
Unbearable as it all was, I wanted to collapse but forced myself to stay awake through it all until, minutes later, the man stopped speaking, and the connection between the two of us broke.
My body—now free o
f the sensation—let out all its tension, and I fell slack, hanging from the two spikes driven through my wings. The man’s body lost all its tension, and he collapsed to the floor. My father and Devon were already moving to him, but the human raised a weak hand, waving them away.
“Lower him,” he said, his voice a mere whisper, and the two stone men moved to the chains. Together, they worked them until there was enough slack in the lines that I was able to collapse forward.
For several moments, I simply lay there, enjoying the lack of sound as well as the lack of pain. No one spoke until I pressed myself up to my knees.
“Is his will broken?” my father asked.
The human—still lying on the ground—rolled onto his back and slowly stood up. He brushed at and adjusted his coat and slid the notebook back into his pocket before speaking, running his fingers through his hair. “Let’s find out. What do you want to know?”
My father contemplated for a moment as he moved closer to me, looking down into my face, where I lay on the floor of the cargo hold.
“I want to know the secrets,” he said. “The ones the Spellmason Alexander Belarus stole from us.”
I remained silent, once more not willing to give up any information that might betray Alexandra.
“Answer him,” the man said. “Truthfully.”
I started to answer “no,” but the word would not come to my lips.
My mind screamed it, but somehow I could not. The harder I willed it, the more it would not come, and with each second that passed, my voice—my true voice—became quieter and quieter until it was barely a whisper at the back of my mind. Its former space was now filled with a foreign and dominant voice with but one desire—to answer my father with the truth.
“I cannot tell you those secrets,” I said, trying to allow my true self to speak as cryptically as I could.
“You can and you will,” my father shouted, full of rage. He turned on the man. “This was supposed to work.”
The man seemed unaffected by my father’s angered tone, holding up his hand to him as he stepped close to me.
“Hold on, now,” he said, glancing back to my father and Devon. “You told me the secrets are locked away within him, yes? That’s why you hired me, to get those out, right?”
My father nodded.
The man turned back to me. “The secrets of the Spellmasons are locked inside you, yes?”
“That is what I told my father,” I said, speaking the truth while still fighting to hold back the details.
“I am giving you permission to unlock those secrets,” the human said.
“I cannot.”
“Why not?” the man asked, skeptical curiosity filling his eyes.
The small voice in the back of my head pressed forward, shouting for me not to tell him the truth, but just as quick as it had shouted, it was silenced by the new, dominant presence in my head.
“I am not in possession of the secrets,” I said, a pained spike rising in my head. It throbbed, but my small true voice remained silent now.
“What?” my father shouted, pushing the man out of the way, his brute strength slamming the human into the wall, crumpling him to the floor.
“Easy,” the man whispered in a pained breath.
“What do you mean, you are not in possession of those secrets?” my father shouted, gripping my face in his hand.
“I never was,” I said. “I lied, ‘bluffed,’ the humans call it . . . to protect them.”
My father raged, lifting me into the air by my throat and throwing me. I tumbled end over end, chain and wings intertwining as I flew until I landed on the floor in a tangle.
“The time I have wasted,” he said. “All on a false promise by my own kin.” He turned to Devon. “Tell my men to head back to shore. We march on your family’s building.”
“What are you going to do?” the man asked, easing himself back onto his feet. There was fear in his voice, no doubt in fear for his life. “This alchemy is a work in progress. I just need some time to refine this . . .”
My father grabbed him by his arms, lifting him. The man screamed in pain, which stopped my father, but there was a current of rage underneath the restraint he was showing. “The only reason I am letting you live is because although you have proven a failure in extracting the information, you have at least exposed the truth of the matter.”
“Yes!” the man said, earnest in agreement with my father. “Exactly! See? Some good has come from this. Let me continue my work . . .”
My father set the man on his feet. “I think not,” he said.
The man paled. “So what are you going to do?”
“We tried your way,” my father said, turning and walking toward me. “Now we will try mine.” He looked to Devon, gesturing at the human. “Restrain him.”
Devon went to the man, grabbing him at the shoulders in his giant fists. The man hissed in pain.
“Hey, now, easy,” he said. “We can work something out. I’ll cut my price—”
My father picked me back up by my throat again and lifted me until I was fully in the air again.
“What do you mean when you say you will try things ‘your way’ now?” I asked.
Kejetan’s dark sockets stared into my eyes.“I spared those people of yours,” he said, “because I thought that I was not only getting my son back but that I would get the arcane knowledge I had gathered back. I put my faith in family and a trust in your word, but you have broken with that. You disappoint, Stanis. You have made a mockery of me, and for that, I will make sure your humans suffer when I march against them and reclaim the secrets that are rightfully mine.”
“You speak of family and trust as if those words mean something to you,” I said.
“I have only ever thought of our legacy,” he said. “Our desire to live forever!”
“Your desire,” I corrected. “Not mine. And certainly not at the expense of the people you have and would kill in your mad pursuit of that power. Including me.”
Kejetan shook his head, but there was no sadness in it for what he had done to me, only bitter resolve.
“Your death pained me, for centuries,” he said. “Do you think I meant to strike down my only son? I had just cast off my human form, this stone one new to me. I had not mastered its strength yet.”
“Your desire for longevity has blinded you,” I said, “and that is what pains me most.”
Kejetan shook his head, his words filled with bitterness when he spoke. “What pains me more is the man, the creature that you have become. Full of weakness, invested in these equally weak creatures.”
“I see no weakness in them,” I said. “Only strength.”
“I will show you their weakness,” he said, still holding me there. “Starting with the one you seem to favor most.”
I struggled, a small amount of my strength returning to me at the very thought of harm coming to Alexandra, her family, or her friends. I raised my claws against my father, but he held me farther away from him so that all I could do was claw at his arms.
“Control him,” he shouted out to the human.
“Can’t right now,” the man replied. “Kind of restrained over here by your second-in-command.”
“Release him,” my father said.
Devon did so, and the human stepped quickly away from him, rolling his shoulders as he went.
“Much better,” he said, moving closer to me. “Now, then . . . relax.”
My body went slack at the command, but part of my mind was still my own.
“You will leave Alexandra alone,” I said.
“I think not,” my father said, pulling me closer as he peered into my soul with those dark, dead sockets of his. “First, I will take from her that which her family has stolen from us. Then my people can be awakened from these hideous forms we now possess. Then . . . I will break her, as I did you. So fragile a thing like her must be. So many bones to crush . . .”
Although the dominant voice in my mind left me unab
le to react, the thought of Alexandra’s going through the painful death I had gone through at my father’s hand was too much to bear. The voice at the back of my head—my true voice—could not live with it and shot forward.
“You will leave Alexandra alone,” I repeated, my own will rising and forcing itself into action.
“So much flesh to rip from her bones,” my father continued, but I barely heard his words.
My entire focus became making sure that never happened. I raised my arms high overhead and brought them down against my father’s. Bits of stone crumbled off the jagged rocks of his skin, and he screamed in shock, letting go.
I dropped to my feet, my knees buckling, but I remained standing. I rammed both my hands straight forward at my father, slamming into his chest and sending him flying back. Still tangled in chains, I pulled my wings close in around me, shaking loose what I could before sorting through the rest.
Devon was closing with me, but, with a flick of my wings, the attached chains spun out from me toward his legs, and he toppled forward in a tangle of his own.
I dug my clawed feet into the metal floor and stayed standing, Devon’s struggles pulling the chains taut. Bringing my wings in around me with as much strength as I could muster, I placed my mouth over the chains still hanging from me and let my heavy stone fangs clamp down hard over them until they snapped off, leaving only a small amount still attached to the spikes.
I needed to leave this place. Now. The cargo-bay doors high overhead were the only barrier between me and what I hoped was the night sky, and I spread my wings, daring to fly for the first time in months.
The act itself was an excruciating burn through both wings, but it was also filled with the pleasure of liberation. My feet left the ground, and I soared in small circles as I forced myself slowly upward like a bird learning to fly.
“Stop him,” my father shouted, the words ringing over and over in my ear.
Down below, the stranger was quickly sorting through the inside folds of his jacket, pulling a vial of this and a vial of that free before placing them to his lips and drinking. I turned my attention back to my flight, circling ever higher to the doors above. With each bit of lift, my wings stayed spread longer, soaring higher, and, in seconds, my clawed hands dug into the seam of the cargo-bay doors.