The Incorruptibles

by John Hornor Jacobs

  What did I want? Did I know anymore? I’d become as lost as any mare’s colt among the shoal grasses. Here, Reeve’s prodigious benedictions seemed less heretical than the Shoestring of two months ago would have countenanced. Here, in the shadow of the White Mountains, the politics regarding Isabelle fell away and she was just a girl, grievous wounded, in need of rescuing from monsters.

  I looked at Reeve for a long time, watching the expressions chase each other across his face. Earnestness, puzzlement, confusion, and mirth. Finally, I clasped his forearm. He grinned, the smile splitting his beard wide open and showing a bristling mouthful of teeth jutting in all directions. He released my arm, turned his horse, and returned to the front, where Fisk led.

  Reeve was an adept horseman and handled himself well. With the exception of Livia and Samantha, everyone in the company had served in the either the fifth legion or the cavalry. It was strange to see Fisk leading such a group. I was used to him taciturn – just us two, riding scout under the vault of sky. And this outing was no jaunt, nor hunting expedition.

  We rode all day until the sun passed over the rim of mountaintops wreathed in clouds. The whole earth took on a half-lit quality, and the air became so cold it hurt to breathe. We found a copse of thick pines and made camp in the lee side of a small clearing. Reeve, Titus, Manius and I unlimbered the large oiled canvas tent from the wagon while the rest of the company gathered wood, hunting through snow-covered timberdrifts.

  Ultimately, Samantha had to draw a ward on the frozen earth and bind an imp in it. There we piled on the wood. Even sodden and rimed with ice, it caught and burned merrily. I flipped open my outrider’s kitchen, stuffed with spices and dried herbs I’d gathered from the Cornelian’s kitchen under Lupina’s watchful eye, and began cooking a stew in the pot I’d packed on Bess.

  Water, crushed winterfat and fiddleneck and sage, peeled potatoes, chopped onions, and some salted pork went into the pot.

  When it’s bitter cold, like it was that night, it’s important to get something hot and filling into the riders, and oats into the horses. In some ways the wagon was a great blessing, for it allowed us to pack more than we’d have been able to carry otherwise. And in winter everything is harder, takes longer.

  It was dark by the time the tent was up. Titus and Reeve used a draft horse to drag a large log over to the fire, so that there’d be warmth all night, while Samantha banished the imp back to Hell. The flames needed its assistance no more.

  We ate stew from pewter mugs. I took a few rocks and placed them in the fire for the companions to stick in their sleeping bags.

  Fisk, who had a bright, impatient look about him, said to the group, ‘We’ll watch by twos. Shoe will take first watch with me. Best get some sleep, all of you.’

  Titus lingered by the fire, along with Samantha, but Livia, Manius, and Reeve went into the tent to take their rest. Fisk stared at the trees ringing the fire, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and pacing.

  I wrapped the stones in a scrap of canvas, stood up, and took them to the wagon. Agrippina’s eyes were closed and her face taut when I carefully removed the Gossip’s Bridle. I uncovered her arms and legs one at a time and massaged them, bringing back warmth and restoring some circulation. Her bonds would remain until we found Isabelle. Nothing more I could risk doing for her. Just hope she didn’t die.

  ‘At night, the big mountain lions come down out of the heights to feed,’ Titus said.

  Samantha and Titus talked while they watched me at my ministrations.

  I exposed her long leg and gripped the thigh and began abrading the skin with my rough palms, kneading the muscles underneath. I could feel her tense and then loosen as my hands worked into her flesh. Her eyes were open, gathering firelight. She observed me with the most curious of expressions.

  ‘Are they fearless?’

  ‘Aye. Quite fearless of man or beast. I’ve seen one attack a horseman sitting astride a warhorse.’

  Samantha said nothing. I imagine a woman who can suborn daemons to her will wouldn’t be too frightened by the threat of an errant mountain lion.

  ‘So, you raise devils? That imp was a neat trick. Would’ve had to rub my fingers raw with a tinderbox.’

  ‘Yes. I’m an engineer.’

  ‘How do you become one?’

  She was quiet for a long while before answering. ‘Don’t know, really. My pa was an engraver in Covenant. Put the fancy scrollwork on rich men’s guns, their longknives and swords – though swords have fallen out of fashion.’

  ‘Sounds like a good living.’

  ‘It was. I grew up with a burin in my hand, helping my father in his workshop.’ She raised a gloved hand and carved at the air. ‘I learned to read early and was too much trouble for the tutors my parents found for me. So my folks scraped up enough money and sent me on a big-bellied cotton cruiser to Rume, where I was presented to the College of Engineers and Augurs.’

  While Samantha spoke, I placed the hot stones on Agrippina’s body and, as Ia is my witness, she sighed. Her eyes became lidded, and she looked at my face, running a tongue over cracked lips.

  I gave her water, but she spat out the stew I gave her. After the bread, it didn’t surprise me.

  Titus said, ‘Had an uncle who was an augur. Mean sonofabitch. Always cuttin’ up animals.’

  Samantha ignored him, staring into the fire. ‘The college accepted me. And when I was old enough, Beleth took me into his service as an apprentice.’

  ‘That old cunnus?’ He took something from inside his coat and drank. He offered it to Samantha, but she shook her head.

  ‘He’s a hard master, but the best at what he does. It’s a shame he’s been so … so disgraced. They warn us in the college not to become affiliated with patricians, because their influence will compromise our work.’

  ‘Word among the boys is he enjoys cutting the stretcher.’ Titus chucked his head in my direction. ‘Maybe got an unnatural hankering for the wogs, if you know what I’m saying.’

  I couldn’t tell if a blush coloured Samantha’s wide, moon-face in the dim light of the fire, but she was quiet for a long while. I was thankful the man didn’t ask if she shared Beleth’s bed. Or proposition her, homely as she was.

  ‘He’s a strange man, one I don’t know very well despite my years in his service.’ She said it with simplicity, and her tone made clear it was all she had to say on the matter. Her face remained inscrutable.

  Titus stood up, cracked his back, and shook blood back into his legs.

  ‘Been a pleasure jaw-wagging with you, ma’am, but I’m for bed.’

  She nodded, staring into the fire.

  I carried on placing the hot stones about Agrippina’s body and massaging her limbs.

  When you’re holding someone’s hands, kneading the flesh of the fingers, the meat of the palm, the muscles and sinew running up to the intricate collection of flesh that is the primary way we interact with the world, you get a sense of scale. Of the vaettir we encountered, Agrippina was surely the smallest. But she was ten feet tall, if she was an inch.

  Holding her remaining hand in my own, I began to realize, truly, how much larger she was than me.

  I moved up her forearm, kneading the flesh, working around the notched leather strap binding her to the torturer’s board at the elbow, and onto her upper arm. I was working blind, my hands moving under the heavy woollen blankets and tarp covering her. But her face was exposed for now and her large eyes tracked me as I worked. Occasionally she’d draw back her lips and expose two rows of sharp teeth.

  ‘You had some of that stretcher pussy yet?’ his voice came low and soft in my ear.

  I jumped and turned. My hand twisted and sprouted a blade.

  Fisk.

  He stood beside me. Grinning.

  It was a grin unlike any I’d ever seen except once before. Full of mirth and hatred. A hungry
smile, showing teeth.

  ‘I think she likes you, Shoe,’ he said. Then he made a slurping sound in his mouth, in imitation of a sexual act I will not mention here. ‘You make quite a pair.’

  His eyes seemed uncommonly bright, and he stood hunched over, very close, his head thrust out toward me.

  The daemon hand swung on its chain between us.

  He glanced at the knife. ‘You plan to prick me, dwarf? Stick me with one and the stretcher with the other? Is that it?’ He chuckled, and it rose like sap and stuck in the back of his throat, phlegmy and thick.

  I exhaled through my mouth, frozen breath rising up in front of my eyes. I forced the tension to ease out of my arm, my shoulders, my legs, and I replaced the knife in my sleeve.

  He stood there looking at me avidly, his jaw working in and out as if he’d spent a night chewing kokoa leaves.

  ‘Hey, pard, you remember that time we ran into Mack Lentilius out near Breentown? That mean bull auroch had him treed?’

  Fisk’s face fell; he looked axe-struck. He stared off into the trees, and his mouth hung open, slack.

  ‘Uh, yeah.’ He rubbed his hands on his coat. ‘He was hollerin’ for us like a scalded baby.’

  ‘That’s right. And when we came into the clearing, that big ole bull just blew air through its nose and then pushed off into the brush. You remember that?’

  He nodded. ‘Shoe, I’m—’

  I turned and walked around him. ‘We’ve had our share of good times, haven’t we?’ I flipped back the tarp covering Agrippina’s handless arm, rolled back the wool blankets, and started working on her. ‘Remember that furlough in Harbor Town? Don’t think I’ve worked off the hangover yet, you know?’

  Fisk brought his hands in front of his face, looked at them hard, as though trying to discern their intention or deeper meaning.

  I stopped. ‘You got a terrible burden, pard. And I’m sorry you took it up.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Think it might be best if you watch yourself around the ladies.’

  Again, a single nod.

  ‘You don’t sleep anyway, do you? You can’t, not with that thing.’

  ‘No. I don’t sleep. When I close my eyes—’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘So maybe you should do some roving at night. Around camp, but not in it.’ I looked at him closely. ‘Scouting, right?’

  He didn’t respond. He walked over to the big black that stood steaming among the horses and ponies, withdrew his carbine from its long leather holster, and walked away, out of the circle of light thrown by the fire, into the trees and beyond.

  When I looked down at Agrippina, she was smiling.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  We pushed hard north early the next day. Fisk seemed even more agitated and desperate to move. Livia did what she could to console and soothe him, but the daemon drove Fisk unmercifully.

  At rests, when the horses took water or had their nosebags full, Fisk would smoke handrolled cigarettes and stare at us and the horses with narrowed eyes, spitting into the snow or cursing under his breath. When we rode, he seemed to unclench and his expression would lose its pained look, his shoulders would unkink, and we could pretend, for a short while, that our dour but steadfast leader, friend, partner, or lover was back. But we had to keep moving.

  Two days later, we came out of the foothills and onto a high plain. In places, the land smoked and spewed great billows of steam and sulphurous stink. We’d find livid green and orange pools of standing water, liquid even in the freezing air and very hot to the touch.

  One afternoon, we passed a rocky field that spewed boiling water into the air, creating strange icy formations jutting up from the snowcover. It was a strange and otherworldly landscape.

  Then a single rider approached, trailing a small pack mule. Bess brayed and chucked her head as he neared.

  Fisk held up his hand for the company to halt.

  When the rider drew closer, Fisk hollered, ‘Howdy, sir! Where you riding to?’

  The horseman stopped and unwrapped a heavy scarf that kept his face from the cold. He was a middle-sized man, burly, with a thick black beard and merry eyes.

  ‘Ain’t riding to anywhere. Just riding away.’

  ‘Away? Is there trouble behind you?’

  The man began to laugh, and I watched as Fisk’s face clouded and his eyes became mean.

  ‘Trouble?’ The man said, jerking a thumb at his backtrail, ‘Damn, mister, Hell ain’t a half-mile yonder.’

  Fisk’s hand shot to his pistol. The man’s laugh died, and his horse turned in place and champed.

  The rider cocked his head at Fisk, and he narrowed his eyes. But the man still smiled. ‘My apologies, mister. I’m riding from Hot Springs, where a whore stole my heart and a cardsharp stole my money.’

  Manius and Titus laughed, and even Livia smiled.

  Fisk sat stock-still in the saddle, hand hovering by his six-gun. I couldn’t see his face from my position, but I feared he was grinning a crimson smile.

  I pushed Bess forward. ‘Well met, mister. I can’t tell you how sorry I am to hear your story. Cardsharps cheat, it’s true, but whores win in the fairest way possible.’

  The man shifted his gaze to me, but not before noticing the daemon hand hanging from Fisk’s neck. ‘You have a point,’ he said, his mirth drying up like a watering hole in the midst of the Hardscrabble Territories at high-summer. ‘Ride straight, you’ll hit a gametrail that you can see even under snow. Follow it to the crick. Follow that upstream, and soon you’ll either see or smell Hot Springs. Stinks like a rotten egg.’ He looked at the bright sun and sniffed, raising his reins. ‘Hell, just follow my backtrail.’ He touched the brim of his hat in farewell. ‘Pleasure, gents and gentlewomen. I best be on my way.’

  ‘Half-mile distant, then? Over yonder rise?’

  The rider looked at Fisk for a long while. Fisk sat unmoved in his saddle, his hand hovering over his Hellfire.

  The rider nodded, and kicked his horse into movement. He didn’t look back.

  ‘Looks like we’re all going to Hell, then,’ I said, trying to put some lightness into it. ‘Either that or Hot Springs.’

  It was an affluent if muddy silver-mining town perched halfway up the skirt of a peak they called Brujateton and ringed in smoking hot pools of sulphurous water. Despite its obvious Medieran heritage, Hot Springs, or Ria Kalla as it was called by the elder denizens, was a lawless town under neither Ruman nor Medieran protection or rule.

  That did not mean it was unprotected.

  We rode into town, Fisk in the lead, Livia close by his side. She had taken to remaining with him at all times, except during those hours we camped. The daemon hand would not let him rest at all then. And it ate at my heart that my friend, my partner, the most reliable man I knew, could be corrupted in such a way. But there it was. The Crimson Man was like a high mountain stream that flooded and washed over its shores, wearing away at the earth. Fisk was becoming possessed.

  Great woolly beasts of men stood guarding the road leading to Hot Springs. They were dressed in makeshift uniforms emblazoned with the letter C over their bulging chests. As we rode in they stared at us, unsmiling, and fingered the grips of Hellfire pistols. Bully boys, every one. Many wore gladii or oversized longknives. A dour, unsmiling bunch to a man.

  We were riding down the main thoroughfare, the snow-mulched mud sucking at our horse’s hooves with sloppy sounds, when one of the men – a big blond-headed giant who looked like two Reeves had been fused to create one gargantuan Reeve – stepped out in front of us.

  He tipped his hat to us, just a formality. ‘Welcome to Hot Springs,’ he said, looking at each of us in turn. ‘Hotel and saloon at the far end of the street. Livery stables behind them, right near that bristle of aspen tips. If you would, I’d ask you to direct your attention to yon building there.’ He point
ed a thick finger, bristling with coarse hair, at a white brick building nested between two wooden ones. A sign hung above two more bully boys lounging on the wooden-slatted porch. It read, ‘Croesus Mining Company, William T. Croesus, Proprietor.’

  The big burly man said, ‘Mr Croesus welcomes all travellers to Hot Springs but bids us admonish you to shed no blood nor prevent the pursuit of industry. Otherwise …’ He turned and looked down the length of the main street toward the slope of Brujateton and the wooden platform erected beneath the weight of the mountain.

  A gallows.

  ‘My thanks, travellers. Spend freely and keep yourselves indoors during the night, for there are stretchers on the move. Although we guard this settlement, we can make no guarantees regarding your safety. But you are free to enjoy all Hot Springs has to offer.’ He turned and walked to the front of the Mining Company building, took the steps up to the porch. He sat on a bench and watched us until we rode off.

  I drew Bess close to Livia. She had a tight, worried expression on her face. She watched Fisk cautiously.

  ‘A word, Miss Livia?’

  She nodded and stopped her horse. She was cold, pale. Her eyes were wide and worried.

  ‘You and Samantha should room together tonight, instead of …’

  She gave a terse jerk of her head and said, ‘Yes. He’s becoming uncontrollable. That thing around his neck is seeping into him.’

  ‘Right. I’ll have him bunk with me in the stables.’

  She looked surprised. ‘Why the stables?’

  I cocked my head at the wagon and Manius. ‘Agrippina. She’ll want watching, and I don’t think it would do to have these brutes discover our cargo.’ I looked at Livia closely. ‘The hand won’t do well indoors, I don’t think.’