Absolute Heart

by Michael Vance Gurley

  “Looks like I have you in my clutches,” he joked while holding both of her arms against her sides, pulling her in for a kiss.

  “You could hold a candle to the devil is more like it,” Landa said. She added, “And a pungent devil at that. Phew.”

  “You know you want me to kiss you, Red,” he replied before he pulled her in to plant another one on her. She squirmed and wriggled, but he had quickly kissed her before she slipped away.

  “There. Bang up to the elephant, Red,” he said, face triumphant. He thought she would be his girlfriend after one game of catch and kiss. She had other plans.

  “Ew!” she said. Other kids laughed and pointed at Wish. He quickly grew embarrassed. To this day, he regretted what he had done next, but he tried never to think back on it. Wish looked forward. At least that’s what he told himself.

  Wish had shoved Landa—the pretty little redheaded girl he’d pine after for years—to the hard stone ground. He didn’t know what to do, so he did what he always did. He lashed out. Her stockings tore when she slid to a stop on the rough cobbles. She didn’t cry, though. Man, was she tough. Her lip had pouted as she crossed her arms and stared up at him with a crooked, hateful glare.

  He hadn’t meant to hurt her, he thought. He loved her, he was sure of it. Landa had startled him when she screamed and charged at him, planting a solid boot square in the middle of his groin. He fell directly to his knees.

  Then they all laughed at him. He’d wanted to make it up to her ever since, to get her to love him back, but she never gave him the time of day. He was sure it was because of Gavin.

  Wish followed Landa and Lucas at a distance, forsaking being close enough to hear anything. Instead he tried to make sure he kept them, and the mechanical-armed man Jacobson had sent to watch them, in his sights.

  In My Clutches

  “DO YOU see him?”

  “Who? What do you mean?” Lucas answered at full volume. He turned his head to and fro so he could look about before Landa grabbed his face to stop him.

  “Good grief, Lucas. How insane are you? Don’t actually look, you dolt. You’re supposed to casually look around to see if people are following you, not wave your hands in the air and call out to them. Have you never played inspector with your friends?”

  “I did not wave my arms—”

  “Shhh!” she whispered. She covered her lips with her forefinger.

  “I never really had friends,” Lucas whispered sheepishly. “Not real ones.” Landa paused for a moment in disbelief. How could anyone not have friends? Although she knew her and Gavin mostly only had each other.

  “Look,” she said. She held up her hand to block her finger, motioning to point to the man across the row. “That man is clearly following us.”

  Lucas tried his best to look behind himself nonchalantly. He nearly tripped into Landa in the process. “Yes, I see him. He has a powered arm of some kind.”

  “It’s actually an arm replacement. He must have lost his in the war. It’s an experimental ‘military-grade lever-assisted’ mechanical arm. State of the art, capable of allowing the wearer to lift or hit with incredibly amplified strength. I’ve even heard they can outfit them with weaponry. My father showed me a design. It’s quite ingenious, really. See, they calculate the tensile strength with algorithmic—”

  “Um, not the point,” he said curtly, which cut her off midramble. “I have felt like someone was watching us since the school.”

  Landa led them to the small market square. It was the dividing point between her and Gavin’s neighborhoods. Once they had reached a crowded intersection, she grabbed Lucas by the hand and turned sharply down a street. She dragged him with her.

  “Let’s go. And for Christ’s sakes, duck down, you giant,” she said. Her own height didn’t match him, even while wearing her topper.

  Lucas busied himself to keep up with her. His dress shoes slapped harshly against the cobbles of the market streets. He bristled as his ankles twisted at terrible angles against the stones. He needed a good pair of boots like hers.

  THE GOVERNMENT agent with the mechanical arm, Masheck Granville, increased his stride. He swiveled his head around as he looked for the kids he had been sent to follow. He would not lose them, not a couple of secondary-schoolers. He didn’t really believe in the visions of lying faeries, even though Jacobson Haveland had gone to all the trouble to capture another one to get more information. Masheck only knew he would watch Haveland’s friends until they led him to the boy like he’d been commanded and bring them all in if needs be. He caught sight of the tall one’s brown-haired head bobbing up and down amongst the crowd and turned to give chase.

  He always got his man. Or boy and girl. Whichever.

  ACROSS THE street Wish stayed back far enough to see everything. He could tell that Landa saw the man turn down their street before they ducked into a storefront. A fat shopworker approached them when they made their way past racks of men’s topcoats. His mustachios bristled back and forth seemingly independently when they whisked by him. They darted through the back door.

  “Well, I never. You two!” he shouted, surprised, but only Wish could hear him.

  Wish climbed on a bench, which caused a mild stir around him amongst the shoppers and businessmen. Even up there, he strained to see over everyone’s heads. He spotted them when they came out of an alleyway.

  Wish heard Lucas say, “Landa, we can’t—”

  “Shut up and follow me,” she answered. She pulled on Lucas’s arm and led him forward on their madcap adventure.

  Landa and Lucas popped into another shop to elude detection. Wish leapt off the bench and raced to the other side of the row. He positioned himself at the end of the alleyway, hidden up against a wall. Sure enough they burst out of the store toward him. All he needed to do was wait patiently and rejoin the chase.

  Landa appeared in the alley where Wish thought she would. “Quick, this way,” she said.

  Lucas followed her commands and went with her. At the end of the row, they practically would have knocked Wish over had he not stepped back against the opposing wall. They didn’t even see him in their haste.

  Wish knelt down and watched Landa run off one way, just in time to peek at the metal-armed agent who looked determined to follow her. At least that’s what Wish thought. The arm hissed steam when the agent used it to brace himself against the wall. The brass fittings and polished piston projected strength and power. It impressed Wish greatly but also scared him. He watched him turn the wrong way up the alleyway. Where was he going?

  MASHECK RAN to circle them all, catch them together in one fell swoop. The well-dressed young man had followed since the Haveland house and waited at the end of the way. It was perfect timing. Once again Masheck swelled with pride at his ingenuity.

  This was not his first job or even his hundredth. Jacobson had briefed him on the boy’s female friend. He knew where she lived already and that she had tried to weave her way through the market to shake him so she could get home. Sooner than she knew, he planned to have the whole lot lead him to the alleged magick wielder.

  He had heard the things Jacobson said about his own son but had been in the business long enough to know the bond between a father and son. When the cards were played, sometimes emotions, especially the strong ones family ties generated, caused men to second-guess their convictions. He wasn’t certain what Gavin had really done, or what Jacobson would do once Gavin was turned over to him as commanded, but he didn’t trust his boss any farther than he could throw him. And with his enhancements, he could throw the man fairly fair.

  Masheck thought for a tick about where the little ginger girl would lead the group. He had decided she for sure was their leader, and a good leader would evade a tail by taking their crew where least expected. He caught sight of an alleyway between the shops. Landa had brains.

  LANDA PRACTICALLY dragged Lucas, sneaking around the neighborhood to get to her house via a circuitous enough route, so as to lose any follow
ers. They climbed fences and hid behind sheds. Lucas’s expensive oxfords were increasingly caked with mud. He tried in vain to wipe them clean each time they stopped until she chastised him. They had been followed. She had seen him on the street. He looked garish and terrifying with the clockwork gear-driven brass arm.

  “We’re literally running for our lives to get away from a weaponized man, and you’re worried about fashion,” Landa said. “What’s with you? Are you daft?”

  They dashed across her backyard and up to the steps at the back of her house. “Come on, come on,” Lucas chanted when she jiggled her key back and forth in the lock until she was rewarded with the wonderful soft click. They burst into the house and shut the door behind them. Landa slid the deadbolt tight.

  Landa listened for a few ticks, waiting in the silence of her home to make sure they were alone before she said anything. Finally satisfied the house was empty, she chanced to speak. “Upstairs, now.”

  They climbed several flights of stairs until they reached the attic door. Landa’s workshop lab looked untouched since the explosion earlier in the morning, things toppled and the tabletop blackened.

  “Very quaint,” Lucas said sarcastically. He looked disgusted, afraid to touch anything.

  “We need supplies before we go back out to look for Gavin.”

  She exchanged her goggles for a nearly matching pair. She slid a bunch of pouches into her vest pockets, which did not seem to ever fill. She handed Lucas a knapsack and showed him how to hold it open properly so she could stuff things into it. Tubes of black viscous liquid were in danger of breaking by being thrown in next to wrenches. Tools weighed him down.

  “Is there anything in here we possibly do not need?” he asked, jostling the heavy bag up and down. “Or do you plan to carry this one?”

  “If I can carry it, you can carry it,” she said. “Now this we really need.”

  She hoisted a hand cannon with tubes that extended from the end to a pack for her back. It was a small engine.

  “Oh my God, Landa!” he exclaimed. “What on earth?”

  “Don’t be shocked. Any artificer worth his, or her, salt knows there are dangers out there. This is perfectly safe. I made it myself. Design and all.”

  “Didn’t you crash a monstrous automaton into the school and break a classroom today?”

  “I did not destroy an entire classroom, I’ll have you know.” Her smile looked devious. “Only one wall of it. Well, maybe a doorway too. All right, the structural integrity might be compromised as well.”

  “What is all of this stuff for?” Lucas asked.

  “We have to go back out there and find my friend. Our friend,” she grudgingly corrected herself to acknowledge that Lucas, however odd, had been helping and putting himself in danger. There remained no mystery to her as to why he did it. “We need to be able to handle whatever comes at us.”

  “Wait, what on earth, pray tell, do you think is coming at us? Exactly what is going on here?”

  “I don’t know, do you? All we know right now is that Gavin is missing and some agent is trying to capture us. And with that high technology he is sporting, we know he must work for the Council.”

  “Oh my,” Lucas said. He seemed to ponder the situation a tick more before he added another “Oh my.”

  She handed him a small leather pouch, undoubtedly filled with more gears or tools. Lucas rolled his eyes, begrudgingly placing both items in his tight trousers, which caused them to puff out in the front. She had shoved countless items into her clothes pockets, and she didn’t look lumpy at all.

  Landa left the room, and when she returned, she carried two enormous black boots. “My father’s. Change.” Lucas looked down at his scuffed shoes.

  “Awe.”

  “You’ll break an ankle.” He rolled his eyes and quickly pulled on the boots.

  “I think I actually make these work.”

  “Ugh. Let’s go.”

  “What are we going to do?” he asked. “Gavin wasn’t at home? Do you think he went back to the school?”

  “Come now, let’s go. No time to waste,” Landa said as she pushed Lucas out of the room and down the stairs.

  “Hey, let go of me. Not so rough.”

  “We have to get out of here. I’m sure by now that the big bad agent has figured out where we went. We have to get out of here,” Landa said.

  “To where?”

  “Whenever Gavin is upset, really upset, he always goes to one place. You might fancy him, but I know him.”

  “Wh-what do you mean? I…,” Lucas stammered.

  “Shhh.” Landa looked out the peephole of the door to check and see if the coast was clear. Since she didn’t spot anyone, she chanced to open the door. They slinked across the backyard to the shed before stopping. “So far, so good. Let’s go.”

  “I wonder where—”

  A strong metallic hand clamping around his upper arm cut off Lucas’s words. Before Landa could utter a word, Masheck slapped the shiny gold handcuff around one of her wrists, arresting her movement. It connected to him via a coiled cable attached to his belt.

  “What the—” Her exclamation fell short when the sudden jerking motion caused the cable taking in the slack.

  “I have you now. You two thought you were so slippery.”

  “Who are you? Why were you following us?” Lucas asked, but Masheck kept his eyes trained on the struggling girl he had literally attached to his hip.

  “You can fight me all you like, little girl, but I have been tasked with finding out what you know, and I never come up empty-handed,” he said, holding up his steam-powered arm holding hers for emphasis. It would have been comical under other circumstances, but Landa’s gaze landed squarely on the agent’s face, or more accurately, on his eyes. There was something off about them. Otherworldly. They were rust colored. That was not possible. Was it?

  This stopped Landa’s struggling, but she quickly regained her focus. A slow grin crawled across her face. Lucas looked expectantly at her. He shook his head, but it was too late.

  “You ‘never come up empty-handed’?” She clinked the metal of her handcuff against the brass arm. It rang out loudly. “That’s rich.”

  Masheck did not appear frustrated or put off in the slightest. “Come, you two.” He marched them toward the street and back along the row to the market square.

  “I’ll scream,” Landa threatened.

  “Young lady, I’m an agent for the Council. You can scream your little head off if you’d like, but you are coming with me.”

  “So you are an agent of the Council,” Landa concluded.

  Masheck looked startled.

  “Why have you been following us from the school?” Landa asked.

  “The school? Oh yes, I’m afraid that wasn’t me. That was… hold on a tick….” Masheck’s arm emanated a whirring sound when the cogs spun around and a gun protruded from the end, pointed behind them. Small puffs of steam hissed from the elbow joint. “I’m guessing you are referring to this chap. Come out now, or I start blasting.”

  Slowly Wish peeked around a tree behind them, hands raised.

  “Wait, I….” Wish tensed, startled, then shrugged, his head bowed slightly as if in defeat.

  “Wish?” Lucas asked.

  “Why are you—”

  “Just come over here and join our little party. I have questions enough for all of you.” Masheck grinned, but it looked unpracticed and had the effect of looking wicked and inappropriate.

  Wish started toward the group, his hands still raised tentatively in the air. After he got close to them, he stopped dead in his tracks. His face went slack, his arm raised to point behind them.

  “You don’t think this is my first go, do you, kid? Everything will be just fine when we get to the market square where I parked my walker,” Masheck said. “Now get over here.”

  Wish ignored Masheck, his arm frozen in horror as it pointed at something. Landa turned her neck as she strained against the handcuffs tha
t kept her awkwardly close to the agent. She looked behind them to the square only a few dozen meters away. That’s when the screaming started.

  Not Much of a Pirate

  ORION HELD the rope with one hand while he rummaged in the bag tied to his hip. He pulled out a pinch of powder, snapped his fingers, and directed the resulting flames to the cotton he’d threaded into the scrim bag he’d left out earlier. He started climbing when the whole contraption caught fire. A few rungs later, the explosion rocked him sideways, the blast deafening him and shaking the entire galleon. He looked down to see orange-and-red flames leap from the porthole. Success.

  On deck was chaos and anger. The Spaniard, whose ship had quickly caught fire, shouted orders to the fire suppression crew to use buckets of water to douse the flames. He also yelled for everyone else to “Kill the boy!” Orion needed to escape, which meant he had to get around the captain without getting killed, then to the skiff secured outside the main quarters.

  Orion grabbed a long rope, used his dagger to free the bottom from the deck cleats, and leapt across the reaching pirates below him on the lower deck. He flew through the air at the end of the long line. The wind flapped his hood around his head. He pondered for a moment how good the breeze felt on his face.

  The captain prepared himself for Orion to land back on deck by cocking back his sword. The edges of Orion’s hair lightened toward white as he pushed his hands forward and dug deep for powers still hidden there, untouched. He knocked the captain backward off his footing with his mind. The captain swung his sword wildly as Orion glided by, a smirk on his face. The smile quickly cut to a grimace as the captain’s sword sliced a red stripe across Orion’s bicep as he swung into the captain’s quarters and shut the door.

  He bolted the door behind him, knowing it would only be a stopgap. Orion grasped at his upper arm and sucked air through gritted teeth. Blood had dripped onto his torn shirt edges and shone through his cloak. He planned to tend to the wound when he could. He needed to figure out why he kept getting nicked in the arm.