by Scott Lynch
“Unbelievable,” he muttered, then folded the paper and slipped it into his pocket. “This even describes my eye color. And gets it wrong.”
“Who was she?” I said.
“Someone born to be a footnote.”
“Want me to get her horse?”
“Leave it. The people behind this will be along shortly by airship.”
“How do you—“
“There are colored smoke rockets hanging from her horse’s saddle. She didn’t want a fight. She just wanted to identify us and fire off those signals. The ship must be relatively close.”
He ignored the rest of the dead tracker’s gear and weapons. The wind rose around us as I held his horse steady and he re-mounted. That wind blew out of the north, as though the gods had decided to give False Note’s destiny a push toward him. The sun was as merciless as ever, but suddenly I felt cold.
“Master, what do we do now?”
“Now we ride,” he said, “and look for a place.”
“A place to do what?”
“A place to meet these people like they deserve. The right place. Excellence in all things, Stray. Excellence in every last detail. And for some of us this will be the last detail.”
He rode south then, and I followed, and we spoke no more all day.
6
They called it Ghost Lantern, a speck of a town in the middle of all that dry rolling nowhere. We rode in at twilight, when the light had thinned to a line of molten copper under the press of gunsteel blue. That north wind shook the shutters of the town’s few buildings. It fluttered the canvas of its tents and busted wagons, and streamed the coats and dresses of its few inhabitants in front of them as they shuffled nervously away from us with their hats pressed to their heads.
Ghost Lantern was another would-be mine, planted near steep-walled canyons full of rusted works and debris. As the darkness came down I saw the phenomena that had given the town its name, spectral green lights that flickered and flared around the abandoned shaft entrances. I shivered. Whether those lights were natural or unnatural, I could understand why the miners had lost their taste for venturing into the tunnels once the things had started appearing nightly.
This sad history of Ghost Lantern we learned from Jasilan Anjhou, proprietor of the Thirst-Vanquishing Pavilion of Auspicious Repose, a combination tavern, stable, signal station and hotel. It had no civilized plumbing and more words in its name than rooms to let, but we were the only guests.
Ghost Lantern was closer to death than Ain’t That Something but crawling much more slowly to the grave. Ain’t That Something was unraveling for lack of purpose; Ghost Lantern at least was seated above a small aquifer and its wells could provide sweet water for airships and caravans. A four-story airship anchor pole was sunk into the center of a courtyard just behind the Pavilion, where it creaked and swayed and added its rusty music to the sounds of the night.
Nobody came that evening. Nothing swooped down on us from out of the open sky, but I swore that I could feel it like a weird pressure over the horizon, a sensation of being watched. False Note was as content as I was nervous— evidently this was his “right place.” We sat together on Anjhou’s porch, drinking tea while the proprietor fussed over setting out paper lanterns. False Note accepted the man’s cups, water, and pot, but insisted on using his own leaves.
I drank his Jononzal Resplendent Thorn. My master rolled cigarettes and smoked them slowly, all the while deflecting my questions about our business, and we waited.
Eventually I slept, and slept badly, though I needn’t have troubled myself. When I crawled groggily out of bed in the morning False Note’s pursuers still hadn’t appeared. Nor were they seen by noon, or by supper. Anjhou clearly ached to discover what we were waiting for, but False Note had given him a generous surety of unclipped silver coins to keep his curiosity mostly strangled.
Celestial Wolf was rising in a darkening sky when a black shape finally crept over the northern horizon. It came on silently toward us, framed by the rising moon like a speck in a magnifying lens.
“Who’s on that airship, master?” I asked, losing my patience after we’d watched it approach for about a quarter of an hour.
“It’s a cargo of wagon tongues bound for Big Sky.”
“A cargo of-- what? How can you know?”
I squinted at the incoming ship, and then at False Note. There was that faint twitch of his mouth, as though a shadow had shifted on a marble statue. By the proverbial tits of the Maiden, he’d actually cracked a joke!
“The gods wouldn’t rebuke me with such an anticlimax,” he said softly. “Not after all this time. There are others with her, I’m sure, but the woman most anxious to meet with me is called Winter Sky.”
Sagacious reader, that name will no doubt ring like a temple bell in your memory. Winter Sky! A woman barely older than myself. I’d heard so many stories, some even from my drunken card partners in Sload’s diversion parlor. She’d put a hundred capable foes in the ground. She had never been touched by bullet or blade. She came and went as she pleased, grinding any hindrance under her heels, on a ruthless years-long hunt for some private mystery.
That mystery, it seemed, sat across from me at the table on Jasilan Anjhou’s porch.
“How do you intend to meet her, master?”
“Standing in the middle of the high street.” He gestured wryly at the dusty one-wagon lane before us. “Such as it is.”
“What if she has a rifle and a scope? She might just—“
“This thing between us, Stray… it isn’t about who can get the drop on the other from two hundred yards.”
“Look here,” said Anjhou, who’d been hovering at a minimally polite distance until he’d heard the word ‘rifle,’ “do you gentlemen mean to say you’re bringing some kind of trouble down on us?”
“Yes,” said False Note.
“Well, but—“ Anjhou sputtered on a bit, obviously surprised by such a plain answer. He seemed to think of a great many things to say, but his eyes kept returning to the guns at False Note’s belt. “Well, should we… should I get the folks indoors?”
“Wild bullets have no particular respect for locked doors.” False Note stood, rolled his shoulders, and cracked his knuckles. “If you want to do your townsfolk a favor, clear them all out. Back off a few hundred yards and find good cover.”
“When should we come back?”
“You’ll know when. Go now if you’re going at all.”
The thrumming hiss of the airship’s engine could be heard, powering down as the craft came lower and lower near the northern edge of the town. Its irregular net-bound gasbag, limned by the sinking sun and rising moon, loomed over the town like a dark cloud. Horses and mules stamped nervously. Men and women, roused by Jasilan Anjhou, scattered into the hills to the east, well away from the abandoned mines. False Note, hands casually hooked into his gunbelt, strolled down the porch steps and onto what he’d called, with great generosity, the high street.
“Master!” I cried, “what should I do?”
“Go to my saddle bag,” he shouted. “Bring my box of shells and the leather satchel under it. Put them on the table.”
I ran to do as he asked. The airship settled over the town in a rush of dust and artificial wind, and I could see dark shapes moving about the gondola deck beneath the bag. I nearly jumped out of my shoes as what sounded like cannon-fire boomed out from the ship; for an instant I thought False Note’s pursuers had decisively discarded all notions of fairness. Then gouts of dust fountained from the high street, and I saw that the noise had come from earth-piercing grapnels, fired straight down with lines attached. The ship was now anchored at three points, perhaps sixty feet up, rocking gently on the wind.
I placed the requested satchel and the wooden box on the table where we’d been sitting. False Note remained in the street, calm as a monk. I can admit, honorable reader, that the thought of scampering for cover seemed barely resistible. Those curious chains of guilt and duty and
shame, which were really the same chain, kept me standing there
“And now?” I swallowed; the alkaline grit of Ghost Lantern was in my throat. “What else shall I do, Master False Note?”
“Just stay,” he said. “If this goes as it should, I’ll need you.”
“I’m… honored,” I said, coughing out the second word before I could slip and say ‘terrified.’
“Keep your hands visible,” he said. “Stand right where you are, and don’t move. It’ll make things easier for both of us.”
There was activity above. Shapes came rasping and fluttering down the anchor ropes— a trio of men and women in long dark dusters, much like the one worn by the woman False Note had put down the day before. They slid down on the friction of heavy leather gauntlets and boots, then landed lightly and spread out, unslinging rifles and shotguns.
Another man and woman came down the bow anchor rope, side by side, with acrobatic slowness and grace. They were lightly dressed in black silk only a few shades darker than their skin, and their clothing was cut to fully reveal their wondrous accoutrements, gleaming redly in the dying light. The man’s arms and the woman’s legs had been replaced with elegant brass and iron machinery, well-armored false limbs ten orders of genius removed from the crude joke Timepiece had worn.
I knew at once that False Note faced Genon and Gaunan, the Brass Halves, the legendary brother and sister mercenaries of Sedoa. Surely their exploits are as worthy of illumination as any of the personages that have graced this narrative, but for brevity’s sake I will content myself with just one striking anecdote (astute readers will find a hundred others readily available in any tavern). I have it on unimpeachable authority that when Genon and Gaunan first came to the city, they were without funds and without metal limbs. Those wondrous mechanisms were financed by years of escort and assassination services as provided by an armless boy and a legless girl.
I felt small, honorable reader. So very, very small.
“Mercenaries?” said False Note. “I’m not sure if I should be disappointed or insulted.”
“It was all hands-off for us until Abuldane,” said Gaunan, the female Brass Half. She had the rich voice of a singer. “We were just along to track you. Then we heard you killed a friend of ours. At the festival.”
“Ah. Him. Some would say I killed him,” said False Note. “Others might suggest that a mouth as big as his was bound to attract a bullet sooner or later.”
“Can’t deny he was a man with a rich supply of character defects,” said Gaunan. “He was still a friend.”
“And so I made it personal,” said False Note. “I seem to have talents in that direction.”
“Oh, we got a whole ship of grievances,” said Genon. His voice was like dry velvet. “Delivered to you air freight, you might say. We spun coins to see who’d go when.”
One of the duster coats, a woman, stepped forward and pointedly racked a cartridge in the rifle held across her waist.
“We got you first, you son of a bitch,” she said.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said False Note. “Friends of another unhappy festival-goer?”
“A woman you left cold just a ways north of here.”
“Ahhhh. So you’re the Restless Eye Trail Agency. The rest of the Restless Eye Trail Agency, that is. ‘Flat-country tracking a specialty. Reasonable Rates.’”
“That’s us,” said the woman.
“Your rates ought to be reasonable if you can’t even get my eye color right,” said False Note.
“We’ll get it right in the obituaries,” said the woman. She brought her gun up in a flash, and by unspoken signal her two companions did likewise.
I know False Note’s hands moved. There were results, so they must have moved, though I never saw them. Fire blazed before his chest and a trio of shots rang out, compressed into the span of a single finger-snap. Smoke curled up from the silver-handled pistols, already returned to their holsters, before the first of the three Restless Eye trackers toppled. One of them went with his finger curled around the trigger of his shotgun and it barked impotently, spraying buckshot into dirt. Neither of the Brass Halves even twitched.
“Hells, that’ll save the boss lady a fair bit of silver,” said Genon. “Though I had thought they’d do better than that.”
“I didn’t,” said False Note.
“What’s the boy’s story?” said Genon, pointing a metal finger at me.
“Not armed and not involved,” said False Note.
“No promises if things get hectic.” Genon’s arms spun fully in their sockets like fast-turning wheels. The joints and gears were silent, and the pop of the pistons was the faintest menacing hiss, like the voice of a snake. “But if you’re distracted by keeping an eye on him, so much the better.”
Then the Brass Halves moved. Fire split the air between them and False Note. The silver pistols roared, and sparks flew like fireworks. Gaunan and Genon, whirling like airship propellers, deflected the cascade of bullets with their metal limbs, until False Note’s guns were empty and they were upon him, one to each side. Brass arm and brass leg flashed; the Halves struck a mighty blow meant to close on False Note like snapping scissors.
The sound of their limbs meeting was like hammer ringing on anvil, but False Note wasn’t there. Twirling his pistols, he leaned against one of the wooden columns of Anjhou’s porch, not deigning to reload.
“Stay precisely where you are,” he said to me. I nodded, mouth open in fright, and then the Brass Halves came on again.
Gaunan’s legs moved like molten arcs, and poor Master Anjhou’s porch steps exploded into kindling beneath them. She caught the shattered fragments of planking with further kicks, and a half-dozen arm-length shards of hardwood hit False Note’s post like spears. But again my master contrived not to be standing where they hit; reversing the pistols in his hands, he moved inside the woman’s guard and beat a gun-butt tattoo against her arms and chest. Stunned, she fell back, but Genon was there in an instant to shield her. False Note’s blows rained without effect on metal arms.
Genon appeared to slip; he threw a haymaker right that False Note ducked, caught, and turned into a throw. The male Brass Half landed behind my master, so that they were back to back, and his mechanical arms instantly reversed in their sockets. They struck directly backward with their full strength and leverage.
For the first time in my travels with him, I believe I saw False Note taken by surprise. He flew through Jasilan Anjohu’s largest glass porch window, and the crash of his landing inside sounded painful (and expensive to Master Anjhou). While fragments of glass and paper lanterns were still raining on the porch, Gaunan recovered herself and went in through the door. Genon dove through the broken window.
I obeyed my master’s strict injunction to hold my tiny patch of humble earth, but I couldn’t resist craning my head to follow the chaos that erupted inside the Pavilion of Auspicious Repose. Crockery broke, glass broke, and blurred shapes bounded back and forth. I heard shouts, curses, even laughter. Metal slammed against metal, gunshots rang out, tea-pots and broken chairs came flying out the windows and doors. Then the very walls of the building shuddered; dust puffed out from every crack in the walls and weathered roof-slats rained around me.
Genon flew out the porch door, headfirst, wrapped in a cheap red wall tapestry I recognized as a decoration from Anjhou’s modest bar. His metal arms flashed up and cradled his head just before he landed hard. I was alarmed to see a pair of silver pistols clutched in his sculpted fists.
A moment later I heard crashing, whinnying, and clattering hooves from the direction of the stable. Several horses raced around the corner of the building. False Note stood atop his like a circus rider, reins in one hand, while Gaunan battled past the other animals toward him.
All the horses save False Note’s cantered to safety, fifty or sixty yards away, while his wheeled and faced the female Brass Half. False Note barked a command, and the horse reared, lashing out at Gaunan with its forelegs.
Iron-shod hoof rang on brass leg, and the woman stumbled back. She circled, wary of the animal’s strength, dodging another kick, and then another. At last she scowled, spun, and matched a scream of exertion to a blindingly fast kick of her own.
Her brass leg punched clean through the horse’s neck. I believe that caught everyone by surprise. The horse died instantly, fountaining blood. False Note was thrown. Gaunan was tugged down with the horse as it fell, and she required several moments to extricate herself from the mess.
Meanwhile, Genon stumbled up and won his fight with the red tapestry. Snarling, he tossed the empty pistols away, snatched a rifle from one of the dead trackers, and bent it in his arms until it snapped in half. Shells tumbled out of the busted cylindrical magazine. Genon caught these easily, then flicked one into his right hand. He held it up as one might hold a cigarette, pointed at False Note, and his metal thumb snapped down like a hammer.
False Note somersaulted toward me, and the bullet cut the air where he’d been standing. Roaring, Genon ‘fired’ cartridge after cartridge from his fingers, and False Note danced desperately as gouts of dirt were kicked up by near-misses. False Note leapt at me, arms and legs outstretched like a frog, and after landing on me with his hands on my shoulders, he pushed me down so hard the air was knocked out of my lungs when my posterior hit the dirt. An angry breeze ripped past the top of my hat, and I realized one of Genon’s bullets had nearly punched my celestial ticket. The male Brass Half put up his hands in an apologetic shrug.
My master let the momentum of his leap carry him back onto the porch, and from there he dashed inside again. When he emerged from the doorway a few seconds later, he was juggling four or five glass bottles taken from Anjhou’s liquor collection.
“My apologies,” he said. “This is thirsty work. Let me offer you some beer.”