Viscera

by Gabriel Squailia

  She was still hungry, she realized.

  What had come over her? She was used to a raging appetite when she got this banged up, but it wasn’t usually so pronounced that she’d start looking for nourishment in anything that came to hand.

  On the other hand, it had been quite a few years since she’d been disemboweled.

  “An admirable confidence game,” said the mannikin, still trying to feel her out. “And yet, as we’ve noted, you’re a pauper.”

  “Well, I never claimed to have any damn sense. In business or otherwise. And when bodily harm isn’t a thing, you tend to get a little lax where security is concerned.” Sated for now, she stood and tossed the bowl onto the counter. “And I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s a war on. For the past century or three.” Still jelly-legged, she staggered over to her belongings, digging through the pile until she found another tunic, identical to the one the boy had ruined.

  “A war that profits many,” mused the mannikin, “although, with few exceptions, they started rich.” Ashlan caught him staring at her body, without prurience, as she pulled off her clothing. “In any case, despite your best efforts, you own nothing but a sagging bag of trinkets and your remarkable talents, which require naught but sustenance to activate. Have I got that right?”

  “Sort of.”

  He was about to follow up with another question, but the sight of her stomach distracted him.

  She let him look.

  Smooth, dark skin was closing over the cavity like cloth tugged together by an invisible zipper—though it took all her will not to scratch at the seam her nerves insisted was separating the old flesh from the new.

  “If I eat before I heal, it’s easier all around. Saves me a monster of a headache. Stops me from slowing down.”

  Keeps me from doing anything I might actually regret, she thought as she pulled the tunic over her head. For good measure, she grabbed the bowl and scooped out the stewpot, which was empty now but for a pool of broth.

  “With talents like yours,” said the mannikin, “I’m amazed you haven’t found work at the court of a king.”

  “What,” she mumbled, her mouth full, “you mean as entertainment?”

  “As a bodyguard!” He slashed his spoon like a tiny sword. “Invulnerable, and willing to work for nothing more than the odd pot of stew? I can’t imagine that no one, in the past two hundred years, has proposed this to you.”

  “I tend to keep all this to myself.” Slurping, she sat down on the edge of the farmhouse floor. “But you caught me at a—vulnerable moment.”

  “Well, and I’m no threat to you,” he said, strolling out beside her. “You could rend my seams asunder with minimal effort.”

  “Anyway,” she said, shuddering at the thought, “I’m not really bodyguard material. Never been in a fight, even.”

  “I can see why, if you’re willing to take abuse like those two dished out.”

  She shrugged off his scrutiny.

  This creature had a knack for bringing up things she didn’t want to talk about, and she began to wonder what she was still doing here.

  “So you’re not a warrior,” he said. “But could you be convinced to preserve life? Not a great deal of it—just mine,” he said, sitting down beside her. “And only for a short while. Work for me, and you’d never again need to sneak away from a village market in the dead of night. My name is Hollis Runt.”

  He thrust a burlap hand at her. It was filthy, soaked with a century of god-knows-what.

  She took it gently in her own. “Ashlan Ley. And I appreciate the offer, little man. But I travel alone.”

  “With holes in your tunics,” he said with a merry laugh, “and empty vials as your only treasure! At least allow me to finish my pitch before you refuse.”

  She nodded, dimly understanding that she was already considering it.

  Her behavior was unaccountable. She’d just spent more time talking to Hollis Runt than she had to anyone in decades.

  She owed him nothing. She didn’t even know him.

  Had she ever told anyone but a relative this much of the truth about herself?

  He dug into his waistcoat pocket, waggling his head. “You were correct, of course: I have been following those junkies, ever since they staggered across my path, some miles outside of Eth. I’d heard a rumor, you see, in my travels among the undersides of certain tavern tabletops—that someone in that fabled city was hunting for human organs. And when these two stumbling simpletons advertised to the entire wood that they were after you, and working for him, well, I simply made a point to reach you before they did. Not hard, considering their pace! I knew what they’d take from you, and it’s true that I let them—without compunction. It’s a marvel that you’re alive, but I’ll admit that I wouldn’t have stopped to mourn you if you’d died like a sensible person.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  From his pocket he pulled a silken pouch the size and color of a wild strawberry. “Innocents will die regardless of my actions, Ashlan Ley. I don’t know if you’ve heard,” he said with a gleam in his buttons, “but there’s a war on. And those junkies, nincompoops though they may be? They’re agents of a powerful cult of lunatics who do their harvesting for a man known only by a fanciful sobriquet.”

  Ashlan didn’t like the sound of this. “Haven’t heard of him. But I’ve been out of the loop a while.”

  “Word is this fellow haunts the catacombs under the streets of Eth, manufacturing drugs from the gland of some Gone-Away god. And yet, rich as this master criminal is, he’s recently risked the attention of the Ethian guards to branch out into this rather unsavory collecting. They call him the Puppeteer—and since you’re so sharp, I’d wager it won’t take you long to guess what he’s building with all those guts, eh?”

  Ashlan’s mouth went dry. “Either the world’s biggest sausage,” she muttered, “or more like you.”

  Hollis snorted, teasing open the little pouch’s drawstring. “More that look like me, perhaps.” Digging into the silk, he pinched something between his thumb and forefinger that looked like a red seed. “But I was made to assist and to entertain. I was sold as a jester, used as a nanny, and given access to far too many state secrets. After a while, they just forgot I was there.”

  “Where was this?”

  “The Court of Cru, may it rest in peace.”

  Cru. Ashlan’s skin rippled with gooseflesh.

  No wonder this worn-out mannikin was making her feel so strange—Hollis Runt was the prototype.

  She’d made him, a hundred years ago, with her own hands.

  Sewn those button eyes into place. Painted the runes on his hide-lined insides.

  Stitched up the burlap around a warm bundle of her own innards.

  Damn it, how could she be hungry again? Carrying the bowl back to the pot, she scooped out the last bit of broth, disgusted with herself. “What happened to them?” she murmured between slurps. “The Court of Cru?”

  “The Queen forced me to raise three broods of her children,” he said. Ashlan vaguely recalled one of Her Majesty’s trips to Eth, made in her ninth month, to take advantage of the city’s enchantments, which multiplied any single birth into a brood of seven. “All twenty-one of those fist-faced hellions at once! And it was a special sort of hell they created for me. Torturing me for sport, over all those years, growing ever taller, ever crueler, their lives prolonged by enchantment. I was their toy, to be sure—and yet I had unlimited access to their minds, and not a one of them had the imagination to judge my character. Given the task of educating them, I taught them all the most violent secrets of statecraft, dwelling in particular on the blood-soaked histories of their ancestors. I paid lavish attention to any tales of fratricide—and told each of the demons that these special stories were for his ears alone. Ah, it took decades to turn them against one another, but I did enjoy my work. It was the performance of a lifetime—or twenty-one!

  “And then, when the Queen had the good sense to die at last,
stretched beyond any semblance of humanity by her philters and incantations, I set my full-grown monsters against one other, then did away with the few that still lurched through those cold, marble halls. You might be surprised how much damage one can do with a potion of a paralysis and a simple household sewing needle,” he said, clambering down into the grass. “And I took it as the highest compliment of my career that each dying Cruvian, with his last gargling breath, proclaimed himself the one true King.”

  “That can’t be,” she blurted. “Your enchantment won’t allow you to harm a living human, much less your pact-holder.”

  “Correct, once more,” he said, giggling as he carried his seed to a patch of mud. “At least in theory! And yet, as Granther said in his Incantarium:

  The stubbornest enchantment ever laid

  In gold or parchment, stone or breath or mud,

  Is but a debt the gods demand be paid

  In salty waterfalls of mortal blood.

  “There are numerous ways to change the terms of a pact, Ashlan Ley, though none that allow one’s hands to stay clean.” He peered at her, and she tried to bury her dismay. “Does it unnerve you?” he said, pushing his red seed into a patch of mud with a burlap thumb. “So be it! I saw no other way to break my pact with the Court, and I could hardly live out my lifespan peacefully once I’d heard rumors about the Puppeteer. I’ve met but a few other mannikins, and I could tolerate none of them—twisted little imps to a man, their faces like mockeries of mine, but devoid of my strength, my code, my character. Now I’m asked to abide an army of these little impostors, carving up the world in my image? When I, Hollis Runt, was robbed of my legacy to waste my life in a cesspool like Cru?”

  He wasn’t even looking at her any more, just gibbering down at his seed.

  Ashlan couldn’t deny how awful this army of puppets sounded. The project at Uni had been snatched out of her hands before Hollis had even awakened. They’d sent him to Cru against her will, with a wave of others cast in burlap and leather, then used the proceeds to weaponize the design. When she’d protested, they’d tried to sell her a story about prevention and precaution. They’d keep more people from dying with these hideous, armor-plated murder dolls.

  At some point they’d fallen out of fashion, and Eth had moved to the next enchantment. But now it seemed like the Uni’s redesign had been dredged up again. It wasn’t her fault, of course—not hers alone. She’d never wanted this.

  But she’d designed him, she’d filled him with herself, and every other mannikin had followed after.

  And what did it mean that Hollis had turned out to be a murderer himself?

  Queasy, she realized she’d been waiting for something like this to happen for years. She’d always known it would, and carried that knowledge close to her chest, pretending it wasn’t there.

  Ashlan had been born wrong, and no amount of avoidance could fix that.

  Do no harm, she’d promised herself, and look where that had led.

  “Well!” he cried, cackling at the mud. “I can’t stand the thought of more like me. And nor should you, Ashlan Ley! Imagine: a thousand little men wielding a thousand poisoned blades, all their devious minds bent on slaughter. If the Puppeteer isn’t stopped, and quickly, there’ll be nothing left of Eth—and then they’ll sweep like wildfire through the rest of the kingdoms!”

  He turned his head from the mud to grin up at her.

  “Unless, of course, you’ll join me.”

  He was ninety-nine, he’d said. And his enchantment had been keyed to end after a century.

  She’d meant it as a sort of inside joke. With constructs, you had to specify something. But no one had expected any of them to last this long.

  He’d fall apart soon enough. Maybe before he put himself in harm’s way.

  But maybe not. If he was bound for Eth, there were a thousand ways he could get himself killed before he even waddled through the gates.

  None of that explained why she cared. She’d never gone looking for him, after all. And it had been decades since she’d given the mannikin project so much as a passing thought.

  Seeing him made it different, somehow. She stepped down into the clearing, annoyed at herself.

  Hollis lowered his face to the mound of earth and began to whisper something rhythmic and unintelligible—then leapt back as his incantation started writhing through the air, brushing against her skin with a moist, eldritch heat.

  He stopped beside her shin as the mud before them began to roll and buckle, as if a mound of snakes were buried just beneath the surface.

  “What is this?” she murmured. The grass below their feet began to rumple. Runes resolved themselves in the mud, rising in a spiral around the planted seed.

  “Your inheritance,” he purred, “if you accept my offer.”

  Standing on tip-toe, he reached up and grasped her hand.

  She took it, squeezed it, and hated herself for the gesture.

  “Help me trail the junkies,” he murmured, “deliver me safely to the Puppeteer, and all of this will be yours when I’m gone.”

  He gave her hand a squeeze back, bruising her knuckles.

  She’d forgotten how strong they were.

  “You’ve been around a while. But with a war chest like mine, Ashlan Ley, you’ll really be able to live.”

  Four little hills rose around the seed, each one splitting open in a jet of steam. Cracks appeared in the mud between them, each one impossibly straight, forming a rectangle that began at once to shudder. Ashlan cowered as the muddy platform rocketed up, shooting clear above her head, clods of earth tumbling from the sides of a gigantic ebony cabinet whose doors swung open with a moan.

  She peered up—and gaped.

  Its deep, gleaming shelves were stuffed with ingots of solid gold.

  Hollis dropped her hand, strode to a cabinet, yanked open a drawer, and plucked out a fist-sized nugget from a hoarder’s trove of odds and ends. Whistling, he tossed it into her hands. “Just a taste, for now!” he called, then slammed shut the doors with a burst of whispered syllables. The cabinet sunk out of sight with a flatulent sigh, and the swarm of runes collapsed into a muddy depression and a roiling cloud of steam.

  Ashlan felt the weight of the soft metal in her palms, still warm, either from the summoning or its place of origin.

  She’d never been good with coin. She’d just lose it in some scheme, or give it all away once she got drunk, the way she always did.

  But pretending she wanted it beat trying to explain whatever was driving her to stick by his side.

  “Deal,” she said, closing her fist. “I’ll bring you to the Puppeteer. But I’m not your mercenary.”

  “A shame, too,” said Hollis, clicking his heels. “I suspect you’d already be rich if you were! But don’t think twice—I’m more than happy to put a knife in my accursed creator all by my lonesome.”

  She almost dropped the lump of gold.

  He thought the Puppeteer had made him.

  It’ll be fine, she thought. He won’t ask, and you won’t tell him. If a creature as manically single-minded as Hollis found out his real creator was a few feet away, there would be trouble. More likely than not, he’d attack her.

  She’d probably have to put him down, and she just couldn’t bear it.

  “Look, you want to stop the Puppeteer from making any more mannikins, I’ll—I’ll get you there in one piece,” she said. “We’ll track the junkies, and follow them to him. But no killing sprees. Agreed? He’s—one murder is more than enough. Eth is too—volatile.”

  “Very well.” He pursed his burlap lips. “Although I must confess that when you started moving around, all ripped to ribbons, I was hoping you’d be more—fun.”

  Ashlan shoved her things into her bag. “Let’s go while we’ve still got some day.”

  “Oh, we’re in no rush! We’ll have no trouble finding them, not with your long legs beneath us,” he said, trotting up to her. “Those two travel about as subtly as a herd of elep
hants.”

  Hollis held his arms up over his head, waiting expectantly.

  Ashlan stared down, puzzled. Then she recognized the gesture.

  Unsettled, she lifted him up like a toddler, shivering at his cool weight on her hip. “Let’s hope they’re still stoned enough to be taking their time.”

  “Undoubtedly. Besides, the ferret-faced woman made that urchin boy her leader at the end of their game. He’s a babe in the literal woods, so I’m more concerned about finding them too quickly than not at all. Let’s do our best to stay off their heels until they’re in Eth, eh? It’s better if they don’t know we’re after them until the very end.”

  “And then?”

  He laid his head against her chest, giggling.

  A spray of raindrops struck her face as they passed beneath a springing branch and into the wood.

  —Thorns—

  Rafe was running through the trees, crashing through the underbrush, sending deer and rabbits bounding, loosing startled birds with his footfalls. Prickers raked his skin, but he was high enough to laugh at the scratches. Now it was Jassa who kept falling behind, yelping out, “Have you gone mad, boy? You’re lost—utterly lost!”

  “Am I?” he cried, leaping up onto the trunk of a downed tree, its roots coated with clumps of dark earth. “Am I, Deuce? Or are you the one who’s lost her way?”

  Jassa stomped into view, wiping her nose with poorly-concealed fury. “Just about,” she muttered. “But if we double back now, I can still get us back on the path.”

  “Fortune’s found us a new path,” he said, raising his left hand over his forehead and giving it a shake. “Isn’t this what you wanted, Jass? Her eyes are on me, just like you asked! Damn the Lady.” He squatted down, licking his lips. “Damn Her eyes!”

  Maybe it was just the tlak, but Rafe was beginning to wonder if there might not be something to all this. The game had done him a good turn at long odds, that was sure. Another stroke of luck or two, and he’d be willing to call this a lucky streak—and it was only a few short steps from there to full-blown faith.