Thieves' War

by Clayton Snyder

  I lunged forward, my remaining hand whipping up and grabbing the back of his head, holding him fast. I bit into the soft waddle under his chin and ripped the vein pulsing there out with my teeth.

  His flesh was foul and crawling with something I didn’t want to think about. I spat it out, the worm and spiders dissolving into mist with his death. He toppled backwards and fell into the stairwell, missing the risers and plummeting to smash into a broken sack of meat with a distant thump.

  I fell, body numb. I crawled with stubborn intent until I reached Cord and yanked the dagger from his throat. The wound sealed, and I laid my head on his chest. The numbness crawled up my torso like an unwelcome guest and made itself at home in my head. I closed my eyes. I just needed to rest.

  Just a little rest.

  Part III

  David Coverdale Rides Again

  Yenn had eaten his fill. For now. The flesh of a god was thick and rich, honeyed. If it had been a voice, he’d describe it as stentorian. If a naked pair of buttocks, callipygian. If a desk, Brobdingnagian. It was all things, and yet…not? He searched his mind, the god’s knowledge his. A thousand millennia of conflict lay there, the great and varied histories of the world laid out before him like cells in a panopticon. He paused. These words were not his, and he wondered for a moment if he’d devoured a thesaurus. He shrugged and concentrated again.

  The flaw continued to dig at him, a nettle in the mind. He dug deeper, past a catalogue of torture, past the anatomy of a million species and subspecies laid out before him like a chiurgeon’s guide, past an accounting of flora and fauna that would have made any inveterate and jaded biologist perk up. Each layer of the god’s memories he parsed led deeper, down a rabbit hole stratified with both petrified thought and useless coprolite. And there, glimmering at the bottom, an absence shaped like a hominid. Man, it seems—humanity at that—hadn’t been within the dead god’s experience. And wasn’t that a shame?

  He heaved himself from the cross-legged position in the town square and made his way out, past the wall inscribed with the ouroboros, past the pleasant-smelling pine and maple, and onto the plain. He paused in the sun, shading his eyes. In the north, the tree line shook and trembled, rattled, as if fearful. One by one, men emerged, bristling with weapons. Better still, they stank of rage and hate, emotions he could smell even downwind. He grinned at his fortune. With an easy amble, Yenn strode toward the gathering army. He whistled as he went, and words filled his head for the first time.

  Here I go again on my own

  Walking down the loneliest road I’ve ever known

  But I’ve made up my mind

  He grimaced, but whistled, nonetheless. It was important to make an impression upon those you met on the road. It was important to allow them time to relax, before your teeth made an impression.

  Worst. Epitaph. Ever

  “A bargain.”

  The voice was familiar. Maddeningly so. I blinked away the white haze that lingered behind my eyelids and sat up, legs crossed under me. The white faded to a fuzzy black, as if featureless felt tapestries hung in the space around us. They crawled with indistinct shapes, thin white threads appearing and connecting them, then disappearing. A woman sat atop a throne in the space before me, her clothing jet-black and skin-tight, her hair swept away from her face like folded raven wings. Her features were pale and lovely, and when she moved, some trick of the light or glamour made her face shift from flesh to grinning bone. She sat with one leg over the arm of the ornately carved obsidian throne, chin on palm, well-formed fingers cupping her cheek.

  I envied her for having a hand.

  She flickered and disappeared. I started from my place when she reappeared at my ear, hands on my shoulders. Her breath was the cold of an autumn day and smelled like air trapped in an ossuary for a thousand years.

  “Daughter,” she whispered.

  A chill crept up my arms, and I froze in terror. If I was here, with her, then I was dead, and at her mercy.

  “No, not yet,” she whispered. “Not yet. You teeter on the breadth of a blade’s edge. Below, all the hoary agonies of the Seven Frozen Hells. Above, the warmth and comfort of life. Your friends. Your family.

  “Your father.

  “And I am offering you a bargain. A simple trade, in exchange for a guarantee at life.”

  I knew what the promises and bargains of gods bought.

  “No,” I said.

  She flickered again, stood before me. She leaned in, face slipping between flesh and bone. “No?”

  An eyebrow raised, a quirk of the lips. Flicker. A grin of bone.

  “Not many defy death. I grant you leave. Because you are young. Because you are foolish. Because you are my daughter. And becauseyou will be back. Now. Go.”

  A ripple of unease shuddered through my stomach. Of all the people you’d want to be certain you’ll visit again, Death is not on the list. She waved a hand, as if shooing a fly, and a roiling curtain of black slammed into me, tearing thought and consciousness away as easily as a child tears paper.

  I woke. Or rather, the pain woke me. I lay in a soft bed, a cool sheet covering me. A window brought the scent of the sea, and the cries of gulls. We’d moved, then. I peeked under the sheet. My body was a mass of stained bandages and bruises ranging from purple to yellow to black. My hand—my former hand—throbbed beneath its thick wrapping of gauze, and I had the urge to flex fingers that weren’t there, to work the stiffness and soreness out of phantom tendon and muscle. A wave of heat and nausea rippled through me, and I leaned over the bed, a conveniently placed bucket catching the bright yellow bile I retched.

  I heaved twice more, empty coughs that cramped my stomach and left streamers of spittle hanging from my jaw. I flopped back on the pillow and coughed once more to clear my throat.

  “Cord,” I said, the word slithering out like a whisper. I tried again. “Cord.”

  Stronger this time. He must’ve been right outside the door, as it opened a split-second later, and he stepped in, closing it quietly. For the second time that week, he wore a somber expression. His gaze traveled to the window, the beach outside. He watched something pass, then turned his eyes to me.

  “There’s a gull, just circling out there. Round and round. Round and round. Keeps swooping down, trying to snatch some kid’s kebab. Shel is particularly good with medicine. Patched me up more than once. Which I’m sure you’d find ironic, considering how well she kills. But Aunties are Aunties. They can also cook like a motherfucker. That damn gull. Persistent.”

  He paused, gave me a wry smile. “I’m rambling. The Aunties did what they could.”

  I tried to sit up, fell back again. “What… that sounds terminal.”

  He pulled up a chair, eased into it. A new scar adorned his neck, a three-inch line, like a punctuation mark. He scratched it absently.

  “Maybe not terminal. But… you’re broken, Nenn. The poison is in every organ, though inert now. Shel knew of a compound that halted it. But it’s not gone, and no one knows if it might wake up again. And your hand…”

  He paused as I brought the stump up. I stared hard at him from behind it.

  “You’re giving me the finger, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not dead yet, old man.”

  He heaved a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank fuck.”

  “What?”

  “Well, Shel and Rek and Lux all said you were done for, and I argued that you weren’t, so the idea was that I come in here and give you bad news to see if you laid down and died.”

  I stared at him, hand creeping toward the vomit bucket. His eyes flicked downward, and he flinched.

  “Please don’t throw the puke at me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I was the one who knew Nenn wouldn’t just give the fuck up. My girl! Nenn Cordson! Corddaughter?”

  I made a disgusted sound. “That’s awful. Never call me that again.”

  “Good. You’re still you. Can you get up?”

  I pushed
myself up, forgetting for a moment about the stump. It screamed as I put pressure on it, my torso and guts doing the same. I puked on principal that time, but managed to stay up, heaving for breath. Sweat plastered the hair to my head in thin ropes and soaked the thin tunic I wore. Cord watched with concerned eyes.

  “Maybe you should just rest,” he said.

  “Gimme the fuckin’ slipweed,” I said.

  He handed over a thick wad and I chewed it. I’d never done so much before, but fuck it. The pain lessened and I pushed the hair from my face with my good hand. I took a deep breath and nodded.

  “Okay, what’re we doing?”

  “A day off.”

  I opened my mouth to protest. Cord held a hand up to stay any argument.

  “You need it. I need it. We all need it. I’m assuming you’re not well enough to walk, so I’ve arranged transportation. Rek!”

  The big man entered the room, eyes rimmed with red. He smiled when he saw me though and knelt in front of the bed.

  "Climb on," he said.

  I looked at him, then at Cord. A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth.

  "Are you offering... to be a horse for a day?" I asked.

  He shot me a sideways glare. "I am not a horse. I am far more noble than those demons."

  I climbed onto his back, wrapping legs around his ribs, arms around his neck. He stood, nearly banging my head into the ceiling. Cord couldn't keep the smirk from his lips.

  "It's happened. You've become that which you fear."

  Rek growled low in his chest, and I snorted a laugh in his ear. He half turned his head.

  "You too?" he asked, managing to sound half-hurt.

  "Oh, come on," I protested. "It's funny."

  He paused for a moment, and finally conceded with a chuckle. "Okay, yeah."

  We started from the room.

  "Now you just need a saddle," Cord said.

  "You know I have to put her down some time," Rek replied.

  Cord shook his head and we left, Lux joining us outside. Red rimmed her eyes as well. I didn’t know what to think, but a part of me softened despite my efforts to coax it back into some form a hardness. I’d always worried about losing these people and had suffered it more than once. I had never considered they might feel the same about me. She offered me a warm smile and her hand.

  “M’lady. Your steed looks most magnificent today,” she said, giving a slight bob and curtsey.

  “You’ll all regret this when I’m dead,” Rek said.

  “On the contrary,” Cord said. “I already have your epitaph picked out.”

  “Hm,” Rek grunted.

  “Here lies Rek. He died doing what he loved. Fucking a horse.”

  Lux snorted a laugh.

  “Bastard.”

  “And then some,” Cord said.

  The day was bright and cool. Crowds in vibrant colors milled about the seaside boardwalk, the smells of cooking meat and the cries of playing children came to us, mingling with the gentle crash of the surf and the screeching calls of seabirds. Barkers cried from stalls, trying to entice anyone who’d listen to buy their wares. One end of the boardwalk looked familiar, a large wheel on an axle spinning slowly as men and women in bucket seats rode it up and around.

  “Is Tug back?” I asked.

  As if on cue, the necromancer appeared from the crowd, himself once again, beautiful and tanned with the summer sun. Lux rolled her eyes as he waved and hurried over.

  “Hey guys! Oof, Nenn. You look like someone chewed you up and shit you out. Say, when you die, can I have your body?”

  “What’re you gonna do with it, creep?” Lux asked.

  He turned to her. “Dear gods, this one talks?”

  Her hand lit with a threatening glow. “I’ll do more than talk, you corpsefucker.”

  He recoiled as if slapped. “That’s uncalled for.”

  “What just happened?” I whispered into Rek’s ear.

  “It’s considered a slur,” he said from the corner of his mouth. “Necromancers aren’t fond of anyone suggesting they’re intimate with their ‘employees’.”

  “But, why did it even come up?”

  “Lux is undead, remember?”

  “Ooh, shit,” I said.

  Tug and Lux were still going at it.

  “Meatsack!” Tug taunted.

  “String tugger!”

  “Brain licker!”

  “Graverobber!”

  “Shambler!”

  “Omnivore!”

  Tug narrowed his eyes. “I’ll bet you sparkle.”

  Lux gasped, forgetting her magic and lunging at him, nails hooked for his eyes. Cord managed to grab her, holding her back while she spat a stream of obscenity that literally blackened the sand around us and caused it to slowly meld into a sheet of glass while Tug chanted something guttural.

  “CALM. THE FUCK. DOWN.” Rek finally bellowed at both of them.

  My ears rang from the proximity of the shout, but they both lapsed into contrite stances. Cord let Lux go and stepped back, dusting off his vest.

  “Now behave, the both of you, or I’ll have lumpy there smash you both like a cheap bottle of booze.”

  “Sorry,” they muttered in unison, and fell in on opposite sides of us.

  We walked for a brief time, reaching the group of stands where cooks hawked their wares. The slipweed was finally taking hold, and my stomach rumbled with hunger. I forgot it for a moment as Tug paused, eyes narrowed. He stared down the boardwalk.

  “What?” Rek asked.

  “Is that a fucking clown?”

  “Fuck,” Cord muttered.

  “What?”

  “Tug’s got a clown thing.”

  “Fear?” I asked. Coulrophobia was a real thing. People ran screaming from the greasepaint-smeared freaks all the time.

  He shook his head. “Rage.”

  “Weird,” I said, a little too loudly.

  Tug’s head swiveled around. “It’s not weird. Come on, I’ll buy you a snowcone and tell you a story.”

  Cord gave me a glance. I shrugged.

  “Okay.”

  Cord’s eyes rolled, but he went along as Tug led the way. The idea of solid food terrified me, but I wanted to hear where this was going. We walked a little further and spotted a booth where a clerk shaved bits from a large block of ice into a cup, then poured colored syrups on it.

  “I’ll try that,” I said, watching a mother and daughter buy a pair of cups. They licked the ice and made delighted sounds as they went.

  Cord went over and paid, bringing one back. I took it in my good hand, tightening my grip with the stumpy one, but attempting to not strangle Rek as I ate. I bit into the ice, the flavor sweet and heady.

  “Mango?” I asked.

  I offered Rek a bite. He waved it away, looking green. "Oh, that's right. Horse dick," I said. Cord snorted.

  We took seats at a long trestle table, leaning in toward Tug.

  “Clowns are a curse set upon the world by spiteful gods,” he began.

  “Needledick shitcock dogballs motherfucker,” I said.

  Elvis, my long-suffering assistant, looking like a wrinkled ballsack and twice as old, raised an eyebrow and rustled the pages of the city’s sheet.

  “Problem?” he asked.

  “Cord,” I managed to get out without choking on my own ire.

  “Ah,” Elvis replied, as if that explained it all.

  I glared at him until he sighed and lowered the paper. “There’s more?”

  “Of course there’s more. He stole my Blackheart.”

  “How… unfortunate?”

  I flopped into the plush chair beside him and stared into the cold hearth forlornly. “Yes. I can’t complete the ritual without the Blackheart. It means years of research in the proverbial shitter.”

  “Could you hire someone to fetch him, sir?”

  I shook my head and plucked a candy from the bowl beside me, then chucked it into the fireplace.

  “Gods only k
now where he is at this point. Besides, not many want to bother finding him in the first place as long as he’s got that walking house in tow.”

  “Ah, Rek,” Elvis said the name as if he tasted something that smelled bad.

  I glanced over, but his tone was the only thing that betrayed his feelings. I breathed out a long sigh, and stared into the bricks of the fireplace for a long time, the dark there swirling like my thoughts. Finally, I blinked away the melancholy.

  “Nothing for it, then, Elvis. We’re going on an expedition.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Got to find another Blackheart, don’t we?”

  “Do we?”

  “We do. Else I can’t continue my experiments. And if I can’t continue my experiments, we’ll need to get real jobs. Like banking, or something.

  “Fuck, sir.”

  “Agreed.”

  There are difficulties involved in procuring certain materials for necromancy. Not the least of which being that when a necromancer enters a room, they’re treated the same way you treat that one uncle who shows up at holidays, drinks too much, and insists you take off your shirt and dance a little. Then there are the jokes.

  “What’s the difference between a necromancer and a necrophiliac?

  About six to eight inches.”

  “They put the romance in necromancer.”

  “Man walks into a doctor’s office. Says “Doc, I’m sad. I don’t find any joy in life. Food is bland. Colors are dull, I hate puppies. Can you give me something for it?

  Doc says “You’re not a fucking necromancer, are you?”

  That’s it. That’s the joke.

  So, when I entered the Association of Secret Specialists, I expected what I got. Angleman Bumfry, Lord of Whispers, sneered at the paper I’d laid on his desk.

  “A request? You were banned from requests six years ago, Tuggerson. What makes you and your raisin of a butler—”