by Conner, Jack
“Well, if you do hear of him,” Avery said, “you can be sure that I’ll be grateful.” He tapped his breast over the hidden pocket of his jacket, where he kept his cash.
The glowing severed head pulsed brighter as the bartender ground his jaw. “I said I don’t know him. Now drink your beer and go.”
Avery didn’t leave. He drank and moved among the gathering, as if watching the fight, but casually, out of the side of his mouth, he would say, “Do you know where Losg Coleel is?” or “Can you help me find Losg Coleel?” He’d been asking the same questions all night, but the bartender’s attitude had convinced him he was getting closer. In the arena, the barkskinned pugilist finally landed a full blow against his blur-speed antagonist, flattening one side of his rib cage and flinging him into the salamander pit. The amphibians fought each other over the right to eat him even as the man, in obvious agony, tried to scramble free. He was almost fast enough to make it. At the last second, one of the creatures bit his leg and held him while two others began to feed from either side, and then the one who’d grabbed him tore his leg free and devoured it. The man’s screams were brief.
Horrified but trying not to show it, Avery took a seat at a booth along the wall, ordered another drink and waited. Another fight began after a time, this one featuring a red-feathered Nisaar against a lizard-being from Toliga. The reptile’s bite was venomous, claimed the announcer, but the Nisaar was given permission to use its talons and beak. Despite himself, Avery found himself intrigued by the bout and was almost disappointed when a figure slid into the both opposite him and said, “You the one looking for Coleel?”
Avery regarded the man. The fellow was scarred and muscled, but his eyes were hidden by sunglasses, even in the gloom of the Singing Snake, and a cigarette hissed between his lips, which were pierced by no less than three golden rings.
“Do you know where he is?”
“I’m to bring you to him,” the man said.
“Who referred me to you?” Avery needed to know who to pay off.
The man shook his head, just once. “My boss pays people to keep tabs on anyone asking for him. He pays them, not you.”
“Very well.”
“Come with me.”
“Where?”
“You’ll see.” The cigarette smoldered between the man’s lips.
Avery smiled, or tried to. The truth was that he was suddenly sweating. It was hot in here, but that wasn’t why. “It wouldn’t be very wise of me to follow a stranger to an unknown location in a strange place, would it?”
“It wasn’t wise of you to be askin’ around about Losg Coleel like you have. You did it anyway. Gods know whose attention you’ve attracted.”
“That’s what concerns me.”
The man, with the hand not manipulating his cigarette, tugged his sunglasses lower so that he could stare at Avery directly, and Avery gasped at his yellow, bloodshot eyes. Something alchemical, Avery knew. The man was a user, but Avery wasn’t sure of what. Alchemical compounds could do all manner of things, especially here.
“Do you want to meet with him, or not?”
Avery hesitated. “Have him come here. I’m sure a backroom could be—”
“Do you want to meet with him or not?”
“Somewhere public would be—”
“Do you want to meet with him or not?”
Avery downed his beer. As calmly as he could, he said, “What will it cost me?”
The man grinned, revealing a tongue that had been inlaid with a glowing green tattoo: the forked tongue of a serpent. “That’s as yet to be determined.”
Avery threw down some cash and left with the fellow. As he slipped out the doors, he patted the pistol in his hip pocket, just beside the god-killing knife, reassuring himself that it was there. But, of course, if he were to need it, things would probably have gone irrevocably wrong by that point anyway. Still, its presence bolstered his confidence and he only hoped that his fingers didn’t tremble too badly to use it if the time did come.
Chapter 3
Night had lowered the temperature outside, but not enough, and as they began walking Avery started to sweat again, and his shirt stuck to his back between his shoulder blades. He was all too aware that he hadn’t been able to find any deodorant in the city. Luckily (or not), few of the locals seemed to be users of the substance, and various bodily odors assaulted him as he and the ring-lipped fellow slipped their way through the nighttime crowd.
Of course, there weren’t just locals here. Despite the fighting, there were more than a few foreigners come to enjoy the unique splendors of the Maze, though the tourists looked a seedy and hard-bitten lot to be sure. Is that what I look like now? Avery wondered. Have I become the disreputable world-traveler? It wouldn’t surprise him.
Not all of those they passed were human. Once Avery brushed up against something, then had to recoil in horror. It was a seven-foot-tall, vaguely human-shaped thing, and it seemed to be fashioned of dark mud and clay, at least upon closer inspection; Avery’s first shocked thought that it was a burnt human corpse somehow still alive. He couldn’t tell if any awareness stirred in the back of its deep-set, dark-as-pitch eye sockets, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“That was a homunculus,” his guide said as they continued on. “You don’t see many of them around, not east of the Toresthi.”
“Homunculi,” Avery muttered. “Yes, I’ve heard of them. Aren’t they made by the Guild of Alchemists in the city of—what is it?—Lavorgna?” It was a place Avery had read about but knew little of, the capital of the Confederation of Wallach, located many thousands of miles away on the coast of Gostrath, the continent separated from Consur by the Toreshti Mountains. The War of Octung had yet to reach Gostrath, except along the coasts.
“I’m sure it belongs to one of the Guildsmen,” the ring-lipped man said. “Probably about some errand. Alchemists come from all over the world to study our secrets here—learn of some new technique or alchemical source element.”
“Like the ghost flower.”
“Exactly. Though that’s rather well-known these days, in no small part to my boss.”
Avery cast his guide a sideways glance. “Just what’s your name, anyway?”
“Call me Yoi.”
Avery’s attention fixed on a certain structure down a side-street, a squat, bulbous-looking building with an ornate façade and sinister-sounding music flooding from its open doors. Seeing the line of his gaze, Yoi said, “That’s a chapel to the gods of the Restoration. They’re a new cult in town. Don’t know much about them, but what I do know freaks me out.”
Avery remembered the hooded and robed priests smelling of rot at the Sisters’ temple. “You’re not the only one.”
“Here, this way.”
Yoi led up a dark alley. Avery hesitated, staring at the moss-covered alley walls but unable to make out much else. The alchemical lamps that lit the main street did not cast much illumination upon the alley, and Yoi hunched in shadow, not even his eyes, hidden as they were, visible as he turned back to face Avery.
“Well?”
Avery shoved a hand into his pocket and curled his fingers around the pistol. “Lead on.”
He followed as Yoi led him up the alley, then down another. At last they pushed in through the rear entrance of what turned out to be a sex club. If Avery had thought it was hot outside, it was nothing compared to the sultry, overheated interior of the establishment. Deep, stringy music played as he and Yoi emerged into a large room draped in darkness and wreathed with smoke from a myriad of cigars and cigarettes. Some of the smoke glimmered faintly and moved in strange patterns. The patrons—at least some of them—smoked something alchemical, Avery knew. They looked both dazed and entranced as they beheld the main event.
On a raised stage of sorts, several young men and women were engaged in an elaborate sex dance, moving languidly against each other as sweat rolled down their dark, glistening bodies. The stage below them was of stone, and it seemed t
o be alchemically heated; steam rose off of it, enveloping the performers, who half-danced, half-fucked as the mist drew beads of sweat from their pores and, Avery felt sure, clouded their minds with alchemical rapture. They were all beautiful, and all adorned with glowing tattoos which bobbed and flowed strangely in the mist-veiled erotic dance. Suddenly the deep, low plunking of the strings stopped, and rapid drumbeats replaced it. The lighting changed, became redder, and the performers ceased their slow movements and began pumping and thrusting and grinding their hips against each other at greater speed. A collective moan rose from the watchers.
“This way,” Yoi told Avery, shaking him out of a reverie, and marched up a curling, winding staircase. Dully, Avery followed. He thought he might have inhaled too much of that smoke—either that, or the dance had distracted him. Yoi showed him to the second floor and down a hall. Grunts and groans sounded from rooms to either side. At the end of the hall, they took a turn and entered a quieter area, and at the end of this passage Yoi knocked on a door, one rap, then three fast knocks.
“Come in,” said a voice, and Yoi cracked the door and beckoned Avery to follow him.
Avery blinked in the darkness, but then his eyes began to adjust. There were three sources of light in the room: two orange alchemical lanterns whose fluid moved with glacial slowness, casting roiling shadows across the walls, and a stout black man who must be Losgana Coleel himself. He was naked, so Avery could see just how many tattoos he bore (or could have had he cared to count), and there were quite a lot.
Coleel proved to be a man in late middle age, somewhat taller than average and with his belly, which once seemed to have been quite taut, going to fat. His face and bald head were clean-shaven to better display his tattoos (and the rest of him was shaven, too—every inch), and each one glowed. He had become his own best marketing tool. His entire naked, gleaming body was covered in tattoos each glowing a slightly different color, and the tattoos moved as he moved, leaving afterimages in Avery’s eyes. And Coleel did move, making love as he did to two separate women—girls, really. Both seemed to be enjoying it.
No one bothered to speak or look at Avery and Yoi, at least until they were done. Then, panting, the young women gathered their clothes and some money, which had been left on the counter, and made their way out, giggling as they left.
“Now,” said the blazing shape that must be Coleel, sitting up in bed and lighting an alchemical cigar; Avery could tell it was alchemical because the flame burned blue. “You must be the foreigner who’s been asking all over for me.”
Avery cleared his throat. He and Yoi had taken a seat, and Avery had been lost in a daydream, waiting for the threesome to finish. In his dream, it had been he and Layanna and Sheridan in the bed together.
“Yes,” he said. “I needed to find you.”
“Well? Yes?”
Avery cleared his throat. “Actually, my friends and I have come a great distance and overcome many obstacles to find you.”
Coleel grinned. “You are clearly not a negotiator. A negotiator would start by sounding uninterested, not desperate.”
Do I sound so desperate? Avery tried to sound more casual. “We need to locate a great deal of ghost flower nectar—fresh, if possible.”
Coleel studied him. “I would’ve let you go on embarrassing yourself if I’d had any to sell. It would only have driven the price higher. Sadly, I sold the last of it some weeks ago. The prices had gotten ridiculously high, what with the shortages brought about by the war, and I could no longer resist.” He shrugged his broad shoulders and blew a cloud of smoke against the ceiling, where it spread outward in a loose star pattern, then broke up. Avery thought of the Starfish even then driving toward the coast.
“There must be some way,” he said. “You must have a hidden store, something.”
“I’m afraid not.” Throwing, at last, a silken sheet around his middle, he nodded to Yoi. “Fetch me some food, will you?”
Yoi nodded and moved away, leaving Avery and Coleel alone. Avery hoped this would be the time when Coleel would confess to having exactly what Avery needed, but Coleel only smoked and looked contented. At last, though, he frowned.
“Why is the nectar in such demand at the moment? I had to go on the run, my whole life disrupted, once I learned the Octunggen wanted it. Then I hear about you asking around. I realized you couldn’t be with them but must represent some separate group, also interested in the nectar. Tell me, what am I missing?”
“Ah.” Avery nodded. “That’s why you were willing to see me.”
Coleel waggled his cigar. “Would you like one? They’re quite nice—and expensive, I don’t mind saying. I may be on the run and in hiding, but there’s no reason not to enjoy oneself, is there?”
“You must have done quite well, selling that nectar.”
“Apparently, I could have done even better. Please, tell me—how. Someday this damned occupation will end, and I’ll be able to go back into business. If there’s better profit to be made, I’d like to make it.”
“There’s only one use my party is interested in,” Avery said, “and it can only be done once. I’m afraid there’s no more profit for you … beyond what I’d be willing to pay to acquire the nectar. I assure you, I’ve arranged with my government to be able to pay quite a lot.”
“And what government is this?”
“Ghenisa.”
“You’re some agent of theirs? Forgive me for saying so, my friend, but you don’t look like a spy.”
“No spy,” Avery said. “Just a representative.”
“Of course, I suppose real spies don’t look like spies. That would rather be the point, wouldn’t it?”
“I’m not a spy,” Avery maintained, then thought of Sheridan. “And you’re right, they don’t look like it. Please, tell me where you acquire the nectar; where do you harvest the ghost flowers?”
“I have several villages in the jungle that collect it for me. I refine it here.”
“Then contact these villages. Have them send in a shipment.”
“With the fighting? No. They won’t come, not that they would, normally. I send people to collect it from them, not the other way around, and right now my people are scattered or dead. Some have fled, some have joined the fighting. Some continued working for me till last week, when I got word about the Octs and their lackeys moving against me. And you won’t tell me why?”
If I did, that would REALLY drive the price up, Avery thought. He made his voice firm. “I need access to the nectar.”
Coleel had studied him before, but now he looked Avery, slowly, from top to bottom, then back up. “If you’re not with Octung, and I can’t imagine you are, then are you with … the Resistance?” Avery caught the faint note of hope in his voice. Coleel, master negotiator, had tried to hide it, but it was there, hidden just beneath the surface.
This was something, Avery knew. Now if only he could figure out how to use it. “And if I were allied with them?”
Coleel shifted, and for the first time he looked uncomfortable. Suddenly Avery realized something, and when he did he almost laughed. The threesome Coleel had forced him to watch had not been a case of Avery catching him in the act at all—no, quite the opposite. Coleel had arranged for him to enter the room during the loveplay in order to seem more confident—in order to lever himself onto a platform from which to negotiate. It had been a bargaining tactic, no more, no less … though he had seemed to enjoy it.
All of this meant that there was something Coleel wanted. And Avery was beginning to suspect it had something to do with the Resistance.
“How are they doing, the Resistance?” Coleel said, and Avery thought he was trying to sound more casual than he felt. “Are they still winning against Octung?”
“It won’t be long now until their victory, I’m sure of it,” Avery said, since it seemed to be what Coleel wanted to hear, and it might even be true.
“I used to have a friend among them, a Colonel Gitteen. Is he still around?”
“I don’t know. I could ask.”
“Yes. Yes. Do.” But Coleel looked off, his gaze faraway.
Avery took a leap. “The Resistance will prevail. Octung can’t last long. And when they do, they’ll reward their friends, you can be sure of it. You help me out and I’ll make sure they know of it all throughout their ranks. You’ll be well set-up when the fighting ends.”
Coleel seemed interested now, though he was trying to hide it. “That would be … nice. But …”
“Yes?”
Coleel glanced up to the smoke dancing and writhing against the ceiling. “I … can’t stay in hiding forever. They’ll … catch me … eventually.” It seemed to cost him a lot to say this, to admit to his own weakness, his own poor bargaining position. “I’ve either got to flee the city somehow or … reach a place of safety.”
Avery nodded, seeing it now. “The rebels.”
“Yes.” Coleel fixed him with a hard stare. “Get me to their headquarters and I’ll help you get more nectar.”
* * *
Layanna half lifted herself up when Avery entered. Already she looked better, with a ruddier complexion and more life in her eyes. A low red glow lit the room from an alchemical lamp on a bedside table, throwing Layanna into an otherworldly, somewhat hellish light. Despite this, she seemed angelic with her cascading blond hair, high cheekbones, long neck and penetrating blue eyes.
“How did it go?” she said, as he came closer.
“I found him, but …” Avery told her what the merchant wanted from them.
She grimaced. “It won’t be easy for us to get through the patrols by ourselves, but with this man—”
“—and his two bodyguards—”
She shook her head. At least she was looking well enough to seem irritated, and it pleased him to be able to recognize it. “I don’t know if we can do it, Francis. I’m still not able to … I would be useless.”
He could see that this offended her. She was a god, by rights, she shouldn’t have to feel less than that. She shouldn’t have to feel the same as everyone else. Worse, with her weakness, she was a hindrance to them, which must be ten times worse.