by Andrew Post
“But I want them to come with me. In my message, I ask the Odium to bring crafts that have plenty of room for all my men.”
“All your luggage, more like.” Vidurkis grunted, facing the doors. “You can come down and watch or not. I’m getting that Mouflon regardless. After that, my sister and the other man if you want, but the Mouflon comes first.” He shoved the door open. “Remember our agreement. That is, if your gracious hosts let you live to keep it.”
Once he was clear of the chamber, he heard the sounds of Gorett painstakingly unballing his message, frantic and pathetic. Marching down the hall, Vidurkis heard the king summoning the private, desperation in his reedy voice, “It’s ready.”
“Worm.” Vidurkis sighed.
Outside, the dawn soaked its warmth into the brambly thickets of his beard and hair. He surveyed a handful of guardsmen yawning and standing about in armor, sipping tea from earthenware cups. Noticing him, they stiffened and set aside drinks and morning meals and saluted. He looked each up and down and ordered one by one, “Pick. Shovel. Wheelbarrow. Pick.” He pointed toward the palace. “Get your tools and go.”
So long as they did as he told them, he’d let them live. He felt a burn etch into the back of his neck and wheeled around on his heel. Sure enough, high above was Gorett, framed and set behind a thick windowpane like a worried creature on display. Vidurkis gave the king a salute and a smile.
The king, face twisted in disgust, turned away.
“Run with your tail between your legs,” Vidurkis murmured, gray eyes fixed on that window. “Go right ahead.”
As the guardsmen moved the equipment into the palace, across the main hall and down the narrow stair to the keep, Vidurkis stood outside on the front balcony overlooking the city’s square. He gazed at the stone finger of the geyser. In his mind, he saw the mural of Pyne and his children. Vidurkis recalled the security footage he’d been shown after being freed from his cell and allowed to shower. The Mouflon and the man in the dinner jacket, standing before the elevator. They both had their backs to the camera and what the lens had captured had only been a scant two or three seconds, but it . . . blended together easily, with the mural. The man in the dinner jacket was pale, but he assumed it was just because of the camera’s poor quality or an effect of the fluorescent lighting around the elevator station.
Could that be one of the Pyne sons? He had two—one dead, yes, but another two that may or may not still be alive. Maybe Gorett wasn’t so ruthless, after all. Maybe one of them had made it back. Or maybe those rumors Vidurkis had heard whispered in the cells were true. That the firstborn had really survived and Pyne had tucked him away into some cache off-world somewhere. What had they referred to him as?
Gray eyes on the geyser, Vidurkis whispered mindlessly to himself, “The Sequestered Son.”
He marched up the palace steps, his filthy, torn cloak flapping behind him. He left the speculations of Pyne kids alone; it was useless thinking. The teeth of that thought didn’t align with those of his other thoughts. To keep his brain well oiled and moving in the right direction, he had to maintain focus, all frivolous thoughts engineered out at once.
He reached the palace’s front doors, found the men waiting with their tools, and pointed toward the stairs to the keep. Still, though, what a thought that’d be. The Sequestered Son to come along and be the thing, instead of him, to broom Gorett off the heap of needless things. It’d be fitting, if nothing else. Almost worth letting him slip by, if that was indeed who he was.
Snagging a brazier off the wall, Vidurkis approached the open cell door—his cell. He shoved the burning end into the dark, cramped room and pointed at the outermost wall. “There.” With the men setting in to dig, he stepped aside and returned to the thought of the Mouflon and Margaret. The teeth between the thoughts grabbed at once. “Yes, this is what I should be planning right now.”
The men walked around him, paying no mind to what Vidurkis muttered.
“Run. Carry that fat Mouflon body of yours to wherever you think you can hide. Keep digging, chipping away, chasing off the Blatta with torches as long as you can. I will find you. I will tunnel to the center of Gleese if I have to. I’ll come out on the other side, chase you to the ends of the world and beyond if it comes to it. Even if my sight leaves me and I have to dog you by smell and sound, I will find you.” He blinked, swallowed, a slow smile creeping up.
“The Mouflon wants me to find him. He sees my plans. He sees the future as I intend to have it written,” he mumbled, addressing Margaret. When they were just toddlers, they could communicate without words, but that was long before they despised each other. “The Mouflon and I pull to one another, Sister, and my plan will become his. He will be my ally in the darkness with you, even if he doesn’t know it. You see, little Margaret, I’ve had time to shape my skills and tighten my fabrick. I can do things now of which you have not even the foggiest—”
There was a presence near him. Already, his periphery was clouding. He had to turn to see the soldier.
“Executioner. Sorry to, uh, interrupt, but the men are ready to begin. By your command, sir.”
He gave a curt nod.
The private nodded. “But, uh, what should we do if we encounter any Blatta, sir?”
“What do you think you should do? Shoot them! Shoot anything that moves down there—unless you see a brown-haired, fat Mouflon. By absolutely no means are you to kill him. Wound him, capture him—but bring him in alive. My sister, the others, those damned mice—fire at will. But that Mouflon is mine, understood? Go! Start digging. But once you reach the catacombs, you’re to stop. From there, I’ll be going alone.”
“Understood.”
Chapter 31
Dressing for the Occasion
“Have you been out here all night?” Nevele stepped onto the front porch.
Clyde nodded. He was on the swing, knees pulled to his chest. For hours, he had been watching the bats marvelously steer themselves around the stalactites.
She took a seat next to him, careful not to squish any of the sleeping frisk mice who had joined him sometime in the night. She placed a hand on Clyde’s knee. “Hey. You okay?”
He met her gaze and feebly grinned. “I’m . . . just nervous about heading into the mines.”
“We’ll be fine. As long as we stick together, everything will go fine. We’ll get up into the stem, work our way through the tunnels, break into the catacombs and the sewers, and then we’ll go for the palace. I guess since Flam’s uncle used to work in there, he should know the way—if his memory serves him.”
“Yes.”
The word memory triggered a lot for him. He tried to dig through the membranous wall dividing him from his father, King Pyne. The man whom Mr. Wilkshire, Clyde now knew, was very good friends with—probably a lot like how Clyde was friends with Nevele, Flam, Rohm, and Nigel. There was a certain goodness and warmth found in the mere idea of having friends, people he could trust through thick and thin. Clyde thought about how Mr. Wilkshire had lost Pyne. It must’ve been unbearable to lose someone so dear, but then again, Clyde could relate.
He tried to focus on Pyne for a bit, prying between the mental blocks of stone that divided him from the recollections of his own father. Even if what lay beyond was painful, it was his and he wanted it, good and bad.
There were no two ways about it. He had jinxed himself, and there was simply no breaking that.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Nevele leaned over Rohm to study Clyde. “You look a bit paler than usual.”
Clyde forced a smile. “It’s just that it’s morning, and here I am on a porch swing and there are no suns. It makes me feel strange. Guess Flam’s rubbed off on me.” He couldn’t look at her face and lie, which probably made the falsehood all the more obvious.
Her laced brow creased.
“Really, Nevele, I’m fine. Say, speaking of Flam and suns, what sort of state do you suppose he’ll be in today?”
Nevele rolled her eyes. “Gra
cious, I hate to even think . . . Well, I’m going to get ready. Perhaps you should do the same. Tough day ahead of us.” Without another word, she got up and started back inside. Hand on the knob, she said, “As much as I don’t want to deal with his sour suns-starved mood, where is Big Fuzzy anyway? I haven’t seen him—or heard him—all morning.”
“Last I knew, he was downstairs working on his blunderbuss.”
Flam had the downstairs barracks to himself. Every bunk bed in the entire room was vacant, tidily made. He stared at the spring frames on the bottom of the mattress above him, zigzagging. It reminded him of a heart monitor, like the one that had been hooked to Nevele at the facility. A steady beat, a good heart, thumpa-thumpa. He pictured that metal line going flat, the shrill electronic squeal heralding death. He recalled everyone in his life who had died. His mum, pa, one of his older brothers—and, of course, his uncle Greenspire.
He closed his eyes, and a thick tear squeezed out among his bristly lashes, curved down his cheekbone, and dripped off the tip of his ear.
All night, he heard the same thing over and over in an endless circle. It started in the middle of the night, when he finished repairing the blunderbuss and decided to turn in. He tried his best to ignore it, chalking it up to night-before jitters or perhaps a latent case of claustrophobia, but it came as steadily as the pulse in his chest.
Before long it had a voice.
Keep digging, chipping away, chasing off the Blatta with torches as long as you can. I will find you. I will tunnel to the center of Gleese if I have to. I’ll come out on the other side, chase you to the ends of the world and beyond if it comes to it. Even if my sight leaves me and I have to dog you by smell and sound, I will find you.
It would end and start its cycle anew but not before he saw a series of images of his friends all monstrously slain.
“Meech help me,” Flam said, raising his paws and rubbing his wide forehead. He gripped the ends of his horns and pressed their points into his hands. The stony tips dug into both palms, but he continued to push until he could take the pain not a second longer. He shouted, and the unremitting chant subsided at last.
He laughed. He’d stopped it!
Keep digging, chipping away, chasing off the Blatta with torches as long as you can . . .
He thrashed and kicked the blankets from his legs and pressed a cloth to one palm, then the other. He dressed, gathered his satchel and bandolier, and rushed downstairs, as if it were possible to outrun his poisoned mind.
Flam shoved out through the front door of the miner’s house. There they all were, not at all as his bleak imaginings had painted them. They were doing as any group would to raise their spirits for the road ahead.
Clyde and Nigel sparred with sheathed daggers, Nigel propelling his chair around to mimic what a Blatta might do, shooting forward for a rushing attack and then immediately retreating.
Rohm scattered in a dizzying spray in all directions and then retracted into form.
Nevele aimed her guardsman pistol at the blotches of bat guano on the stone walls.
Flam, not wanting to alert the others to what plagued his mind, took the blunderbuss from his shoulder strap and plunked a round into the chamber. He was sure to secure the safety catch before he approached the group, afraid of himself and what his hands might do.
He did some target practice off on his own, returned good mornings when they were sent his way, and tried not to rouse suspicion.
He’d been hit by gray light before. It had gone away, but it was never like this, never so . . . ensnaring. Maybe once they got on the move with a task at hand, he might be able to ignore it. He pulled the trigger, and the scattershot went more or less where he wanted it to, snapping the rounded tip of a stalactite from its stone shoulders.
The satisfaction didn’t last. The murmur set in louder than before in the fuzzy din in his ringing ears. He reloaded like an automaton, his mind reeling off one prayer after another to Meech on high: Please. Make this thing let me go.
Later in the morning, Nigel came outside in his wheelchair with a box on his lap. He checked the time on the pocket watch from his waistcoat and snapped closed its golden lid. “It appears ye are all set to go and yet, at the same time, not at all prepared.” He tucked the watch away.
The group stopped their exercises and turned to the mustachioed miner.
Clyde was still new to wielding the dagger, and it took him three tries to get it back into its sheath without jamming the blade into his trouser pocket or through his belt loop.
As Nigel hummed down the ramp of the porch, Scooter on his shoulder, Clyde noticed that the large cardboard box on his lap held several folded garments, buckled straps, and loose clasps that chimed with each bump.
Clyde looked at his own tuxedo, which was becoming threadbare in the knees and elbows—to the point even Nevele could do nothing to salvage it—and was in dire need of a good laundering. It smelled of all the places they’d been.
Nigel threw the brake on his chair. He pulled the bundles out one at a time and tossed them over. Unfolding his pile, Clyde realized it was heavy, industrial overalls with sturdy bands of metal-woven leather crossing the chest and waist, a deep hood with an attached respirator mask, and a boot connected to the end of each pant leg. Out of a pocket, a pair of insulated gloves fell, and Nigel explained that the wearer could grip metal at white-hot temperatures without even feeling so much as a lick of heat. Next Nigel handed out accessories for the suits that could button on or clip to the garments: goggles, extra holsters, canteens, tinned rations that’d never in a million years spoil, and of course ammunition for not only Flam’s blunderbuss but Nevele’s pistol as well.
Helping one another, they all put on the miners’ outfits and did up the complicated series of zippers, flaps, toggles, buttons, and clasps. Rohm was the only one who required no assistance. The frisk mice poured into the open collar, and the suit ballooned like a ghost taking up residence inside a sack.
“It’ll be hot as blazes one second and freezing the next,” Nigel explained. “That’s the give and take of the mine, and ye will have no choice but to deal with it. Ye can unzip vents under the arms of the suits as well as in the gloves and on the hoods. Keep them zipped until ye get so hot ye can’t think. Leaving one open by accident and letting a glob of magma drip in there probably wouldn’t feel all that delightful.”
“Delightful,” Scooter squawked.
Nevele’s and Rohm’s suits fit well, but Flam’s was a size too small and Clyde’s was a size too big. They decided to swap, and yet the same result was found. The others had a nervous bout of laughter.
Nevele took pity on them and sent her stitches out to repair the suits. The hem was let out of Flam’s, and suddenly there was room for his gut as well as the remainder of his girth. She stepped over to Clyde and extended a hand toward him. The stitches moved out and he wiggled through every inch of the suit. She retracted the stitches and patted his shoulder, the suit tailored perfectly. “Good as new.” There was a slight quiver to her voice that even her reassuring smile couldn’t hide.
Next, Nigel took out a box of flashlights: chrome rods with bulbs netted with metal on the end. He passed them out to the travelers. “A torch for each of ye, plus batteries. A miner’s best friend, these.”
Once everything was in place, Nigel looked them over, nodded. He held Clyde’s gaze, and while the others were doing some last-minute adjusting, Nigel addressed him with a jut of his chin. He reached into the box and stealthily took the last item out.
He presented it to Clyde: a greasy rag cocooning something heavy and oddly shaped.
Clyde unwrapped it: a shiny green, ornate revolver with a very long barrel and highly wrought etchings. The grip displayed the design of a large broadsword between flowing gusts of wind or smoke. Lifting it from the box, he immediately felt its weight. It seemed like some kind of anomaly of physics, as if it should weigh half as much. Clyde ran a thumb over the designs and turned it so Nigel could see.
“Commencement,” Nigel said. “The spirits passing, one folding into the other. One passing the sword, the other receiving it. The ceremony and the weapon have the same title . . . Have ye told the others what I told ye last night?”
“Thank you, and no.” Clyde tucked the gun, Commencement, into the hammer holster on his miner suit’s hip. The balled rag he held for a moment, wondering if it too was part of the artifact. In the bottom right corner of the stained rag was monogrammed AW.
Albert Wilkshire. Always with him.
He carefully folded the handkerchief and slipped it into the pages of the journal.
“I’d offer ye another weapon, but I tore the place top to bottom last night and couldn’t find anything besides my own and . . . well, I’m afraid I can’t let ye take my own blunderbuss. Kind of need it to keep myself safe, ye understand.”
“Yes.” Clyde deposited the journal into his pocket. “But I suppose I have to tell them now, don’t I?”
Nigel looked grave but nodded. “I was going to give it to ye after all this was said and done, bring it to ye myself, but it’s the only weapon I had lying around.”
“Will they know it was my father’s gun?”
The others came over, their preparations finished. To Clyde and Nigel’s chagrin, it didn’t take them but a second to notice the new gleaming piece of emerald metal in Clyde’s holster.
Flam laughed. “You could probably hock that thing for a pretty penny when this is all over. If you want my help, I know a guy who knows a guy who—”
“That’s . . .” Nevele said, aghast. She looked to Nigel. “How do you have that? That thing’s been lost for years. Gorett nearly turned the entire city front ways back looking for it.”
Nigel took the accusation full-on, said not a word, merely twitched his eyebrows in the direction of Clyde. “I’m sorry, lad. I think the bear cat’s out of the bag.”