“Even need wouldn’t make me stay here another night.” Colton said as he exited.
CHAPTER THREE
* * *
The drop from the burning room ended in cold water, where he lost consciousness. He awoke submerged, face down, with no idea how long he’d been there. Some sense described his surroundings in the pitch-black cave, feeling every curve of the smooth rock walls, where the stream wound through the stone floor, guiding him toward the way out. Soon, daylight filtered back into his sight and led him to a chamber open to the sky.
Climbing out of the cave mouth was a chore with only one working arm. A rope-and-slat ladder to one side of the deep hole looked sturdy enough, but attempting to climb it snapped the ropes and brought the ladder clattering down on his head. The climb was treacherous, but he found enough handholds and footing to make it up to open air. At the edge of the opening was a calm pool fed by a small stream that ambled down into the grove from the higher foothills.
With no sign of his memory returning, he tried to parse out the things he knew from the things he didn’t. Basics were still present—the names of objects and colors, how to walk and balance, language, mathematics. And yet, in all that basic knowledge, what images he could discern felt out of place. None of the names that cropped up in the jumble of his thoughts rang familiar, and certainly none felt true enough to be his own. More disturbing to him than not remembering who he was, though, was not remembering what he was.
He obsessed over this thought as he studied his one working hand. His fingers moved with strength and grace, and could bend almost as far backwards as forward. His feet had no toes but were segmented from ankle to tip, the bottoms made of a wood-like substance as hard as stone. His entire foot could curl almost completely down onto itself to provide him with sure footing and balance, certainly a help in climbing out of the cave.
The rest of his body was a collection of metal plates in varying hues of gold and orange and brown, held in place by rivets whose tops were worn almost flat with time. Some were stained green with age, but he found almost no signs of rust. Certain sections—his shoulders near his neck, his right outer thigh, and the lower sides of his torso—were built of the stone-wood material. All his joints moved freely from his toes to his neck, save for the damaged arm, but he couldn’t quite see how his joints articulated. At times, inflexible metal parts seemed to shift and twist to make movement possible, and any actual joints that existed were well hidden beneath the metal.
None of that matters if I don’t know what or who I am. Somewhere, in all these plates and rivets and joints, must be some sort of clue. As he contorted himself to scan the less accessible parts of his form, the sun peeked over the horizon, glinting off of the metal of his upper back. He caught the reflection in the water below and saw something dark on the backside of his shoulder.
Brushing away the dirt that had settled into the crevices was difficult, but the light began to pick up as the sun rose, and in the reflection he saw what lay beneath: letters. The engraving was old and worn and almost unreadable, but he could make out a few shapes in the reflection; an S and an A together, what looked like an M, at least what he could see of it, a large gap of nothing followed by most of an L, the rest unreadable.
No matter how many times he tried to make a word, the letters didn’t quite work out, and the spaces in between were too worn to be read. Was it a name? Samuel? He rolled the word over in his head, searching for familiarity, but found none. Maybe if I say it out loud?
“Samuel.” His own voice surprised him. A smooth, resonant sound…natural. He had expected something grating or metallic, but it was measured and even rather pleasant. “Samuel,” he repeated. Still no familiarity, no pang of recognition, no sudden flash of memory.
“I guess it’s as good a name as any,” Samuel said.
CHAPTER FOUR
* * *
Colton followed Bales across the small town to the remains of the burned-out building. The pace was faster than Colton would have liked. Avoiding excess attention was paramount, and enough was directed at them just for being outsiders. They cut down an alleyway between two low buildings, emerging across the street from where the rubble was being tended to by an old man in the boots and breeches of a farmer. Colton stepped up his pace and caught Bales by the shoulder.
“Let me handle this,” he said. Bales gave him an exasperated look. “You’re too wound up. Just hover around the side and do your thing. I’ll go talk to the old man.”
“Weh’ thanker vereh much, sur.” Ah, Bales’s sarcasm. “I jes go ovur here an’ do’s as I’m told.”
Colton tightened his grip, just enough to hurt. “Yes. You will. Or else we’ll end up in a repeat of Tam, and neither of us can afford that right now.”
Colton could smell stale beer mixed with farls on Bales’s breath as he leaned in close. “Don’t forget who’s in charge here,” Bales said.
Colton’s eyes narrowed and he set his jaw, a convincing look for his partner’s benefit even though he knew that Bales’s perceived authority was spurious. “Don’t you forget it was your mistake that required my presence in the first place. Let’s just go take a look so we can get out of this pit.”
Bales backed off, and the two of them headed toward the smoldering ashes. The old man sifted the rubble with a shovel, dousing any still-glowing embers with water from a nearby bucket and prodding still-standing timbers to test their strength. The old man looked up from his work and leaned on his shovel, eyeing Colton and Bales as they approached.
“Can I he’p you boys with suh’m?” the old man said.
“Many thanks, sir,” Colton replied. “We came by to see the results.” His tone was amiable, with just the right note of somberness. “Rode into town last night just as this was dyin’ down. What happened?”
The old man glanced at Bales as he strode around to the side of the building, then looked over his shoulder at the twisted pile of beams and shingles. “Dunno, really. Man that run this place’s name was Ferron. An alchemist, always work’n on suh’m.” He turned back to Colton. “Been set up here a few years now. Did repairs, little smithin’, worked on constructs if anyone had ‘em need workin’ on. Place jes started up a’blazin’ last night, not much warnin’.”
Colton stepped forward, sifting the front of his boot through some of the ash on the street-side of the lot. “What a shame. Anyone hurt?”
The old man nodded. “Found some bones back inna back, look like prolly Ferron’s.” He shook his head.
Bales had worked his way toward the back and was kneeling just outside the perimeter. Colton could see his eyes were closed, but to a passerby he probably looked like he was staring at the building’s remains, trying to find something beneath. He’d have already begun, and Colton needed to give him a little time. “No one else, though?”
“Not unless you count a construct o’ two.” Colton’s ears perked up. “Bits an’ parts of a couple of ‘em inner, prolly drop-offs.”
“Drop-offs?” Colton asked.
“Ain’t many folks round here got money o’ skills to have a construct.” The old man shifted his weight off of the shovel and turned, talking while he poked, and peered over his shoulder to where Bales had knelt. “Most o’ Ferron’s construct repairin’ business came from merchants. They drop broke ‘uns off here on one way, an’ pick ‘em up onna way back. Drop offs. What’s he doin’?” He turned back to Colton, pointing his thumb back at Bales.
“Bound to be some upset merchants coming back through your town soon,” Colton deflected. Bales was dead still. How long would this take? “Do you know how many were in there?”
“Can’t say fer sure yet. ‘Least two, best I kin tell. Lots o’ piles o’ parts and stuff back in there, but the fire was so hot as to melt the metal, so’s nothin’ much left, now. Don’t really know how that happens, unless Ferron’s gettin’ inta some alchemy he shouldn’t.”
Colton pressed his palms to his back just above his hips and arched, str
etching out soreness. “I’ve seen a few fires do that. Usually takes a little something extra, but it’s not uncommon.”
The old man was staring at Bales. “Uncommon ‘round here, it is.” He turned back. “What’s he doin’?”
Colton leaned and looked at his partner, who had just opened his eyes and was beginning to stand up. “I don’t know, honestly. He has a weird fascination with fire, and he likes to study remains like this.” He leaned toward the old man, friendly, and lowered his voice. “You ask me, it’s a little off, but do you mind if he roots around a little? I never know what he sees in these things, but I have to ride with him for at least another few days and I’ll hear about it the whole way if he doesn’t get the chance.”
“Ain’t no hair off my feet. Let him root all he wants.”
“Thank you much, sir.” He clapped an amiable hand on the old man’s shoulder. “I do appreciate it.”
“Ya find anything valuable, it comes to me for takin’ to the sheriff. Just ‘member that, a’ight?”
Colton nodded and skirted around the old man. Bales looked up at him and shook his head. Colton nodded and tilted a hand toward the ruins, and Bales stepped into the middle of the rubble, around piles of unrecognizable remains, then leaned down and scooped up a handful of ashes. With his hand to his nose he inhaled, then let the ashes sift between his open fingers.
“Anything?” Colton asked as he approached.
“Nothing, as expected.” Bales made to look like he was searching the rubble, but was looking past it out into the grassland. “Nothing for at least fifty miles in all directions. Nothing got out.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Have I ever been wrong?”
Colton shrugged, looking around in the room where he stood. He guessed this was the front area of the shop, where customers would come to do business. Along the opposite wall was a blackened heap of half-melted metal. In the shape, Colton could make out what used to be a hand and part of a face.
Bales had made his way toward the back of the shop, where there was more wood and timbers, enough to prevent much digging. As Colton joined him, he pointed into the pile. Jutting out from beneath the black latticework he spied a skull turned on its side facing away from them. The bones of an arm reached out into the room, searching for something it would never find. Bales directed Colton’s gaze to the rear corner past the body, where he saw another melted form slumped against what might have been a bookcase, jutting up from a hardened pool of metallic slag. “Good enough?” Bales’s eagerness set Colton’s teeth together.
“Good enough,” he agreed.
Bales turned without a word and tromped out of the ashes back toward his horse.
CHAPTER FIVE
* * *
Samuel bound up his dead arm with torn strips of his cloak’s lining, and sat on a rock outcrop at the edge of the cave mouth peering down on the town. The village’s palette of tans and browns was marred at its closest edge by a fierce wound of black and gray that still contributed tendrils of colorless smoke to the morning haze. Just after dawn, two travelers came to question an old man tending the ruin and sift through the rubble themselves. They were as out of place in the village as a bear at the dinner table, clothed head to toe in dark leather and capped with hats whose brims had been folded to form three points.
Samuel’s anxiety spiked as their search neared his escape route, but they never found the trap door. The shorter of the two seemed anxious to leave, the other more staid and calm. When they completed their search they mounted their horses, already packed for long travel. The town sat on a crossroads of sorts, a place where three well-traveled paths converged in the tall grass. The westerly track on which Mr. Anxious and his friend left headed off into the grassland opposite Samuel’s perch, over a low rise in the distance and away from the north-south road.
I could sit here all damned day, Samuel thought. I just need to pick a direction. He took a step to the south and hesitated, noting the western road’s slight southerly bend. Samuel knew nothing of the two investigators, but the fact that they spent the morning searching the ruins of a building where he almost died tickled his intuition, and he didn’t feel like running afoul of them anytime soon, so he set off to the north.
Samuel’s thoughts drifted through his void of memory, trying to distinguish what he knew from what he didn’t. Deductive reasoning remained intact, at least at some level. Based on the temperature and position of the suns it was likely the end of autumn, heading into winter. A few plains flowers still showed their petals, opening to the small shafts of sunlight that touched them through the cloud-mottled sky. He knew the high mountains stood to the east and the small, distant range stood to the west, with the vast, grassy plain between. He knew words like forest and road and grass, and could even identify the types of foliage surrounding him. He was positive if he were to run across an animal, he’d be able to identify that, as well.
Yet his own name escaped him so he made one up. Although there were flashes of others of his kind in his erratic memories, he couldn’t hazard a guess about his race. The metals which composed his skin—shell?—were familiar, but the fluidity of his movement and the nature of his construction remained a mystery. The most frightening gap in his knowledge was that he didn’t know who he could trust.
At best, the person who set fire to that building didn’t care that he was trapped within; at worst, that person knew for sure and wanted him there. He was grateful his instinct and sense of self-preservation had stuck around through whatever trauma scrambled his memory, allowing him to escape at least with his life. Was it life, really? A walking structure of metal and stone and wood, riveted together and powered by wonder and worry and fear.
The grass parted and he stepped out onto the northern road, sinking slightly into the hard-packed earth that shed no dust after the night’s rainfall. The path would, for a time, give him a direction and a purpose as simple as follow the road. The last of the visible travelers was already past him toward town, and the road rose out of the plain to begin a long but gentle climb. Maybe it was best to just walk and think.
• • • • •
Daylight passed beneath Samuel’s notice; the suns—Big Sister and Little Blue, he recalled—falling low in the eastern sky ever closer to the tall mountains. Samuel encountered only one other in his long walk, a grumbling old farmer with an empty, mule-drawn cart. “Ganna!” the little man kept snarling at the mule, who’d nicker and bray in response, and occasionally take a few steps forward. Samuel called over to the farmer between his arguments with the mule and received a dismissive grunt from below the brim of a worn straw hat. The man had no interest in conversation and moved along without a second glance.
Samuel continued northward as the suns were pulled over the horizon, the sunset first igniting the eastern sky with brilliant oranges and then, for the few moments after Big Sister had gone to bed but Little Blue stayed out to play, a cool blue-gray hue took over, casting eerie shadows in the grass. After a few moments, Little Blue’s light failed, and the last fleeting moments of day chased the siblings over the mountains. Stars twinkled to life across the wide-open sky, and deep blue twilight faded down to the black void of night.
The day’s travel had not brought even a hint of exhaustion, thirst, or hunger. He wondered about his need for food or water, or if his kind had other means of nourishment if any was even necessary. There had been little dust or wind to aggravate his joints and a blessed lack of rain, although he could see a darkness in the far distance to the west that hinted of some in the near future. The cloak provided ample protection, but were the elements even much of a concern? He felt no urge to stop or camp, no desire to rest or relax, and he found the fading of the sunlight had not dampened his sight to the degree he thought it might. In the cavern beneath the town, in utter blackness with not even a hint of light, he could not see but instead sensed. In the nighttime starlight, however, his sight remained sharp but colorless.
In
a world drained of color, the grass took on a ghostly grey against the almost stark black-and-white of the distant trees. Starlight danced in glowing halos along the tops of anything that broke the surface of the sea of grass. Rock outcrops glistened as though wet, scrubs glittered in the light breeze, and solitary trees shone with angelic brilliance. Steps before the top of a long rise he turned back, taking in the valley and distant mountains. Looking out across the open plain was like standing atop an oceanside cliff as moonlight danced along the tops of waves. Wind rustled the leaves and grass around him, and he nodded a silent goodbye to the crossroads village, now so far behind.
The road flattened as he crested the ridge, running level for some time and curving around a hill to the east, the tree line in the distance. The bulk of the forest stood as a black wall edged in radiant silver in his darksight, the grass giving way to more and more underbrush closer to the trees. After cresting the hill he picked up his pace, spurred on not only by the easier terrain but the allure of the looming forest.
He wasn’t sure how long night had been upon him when he turned the bend in the road. The tree line ahead was closer than he expected, and now flickered with an orange glow that brought him to a halt. After taking a moment to adjust, he found the splash of color in the otherwise gray-toned image was the result of a series of campfires.
A pair of fires flared in his vision, and light from several more reflected not only off the trees, but from the sides of a clutch of wagons on the northwest side of the road. They appeared to be less than an hour’s walk away, a distance Samuel thought he could cover in half that time judging by his almost unnerving excitement. Was it anticipation, or fear, or a mix of both?
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