Ghosts of Sanctuary

by Robert J. Crane

  “I’m not in love,” Vaste said crossly. “I’ve merely seen a beautiful troll woman in a town and world where I’m told there are no more trolls, let alone ones that might catch my fancy. Forgive me for being slightly … uh … intrigued.”

  Alaric’s smile was infuriating. “It is nice to see you go this way at last, brother.”

  “Stop ‘brothering’ me,” Vaste said, grumbling. “I don’t even know where this woman is. Perhaps Curatio is right. Perhaps she’s just a figment of my sexy, overactive imagination. Maybe she doesn’t exist at all except in my longing, in my dreams, in those watches of night when I awake and am—”

  “I don’t think I need to hear anymore about this,” Alaric said, looking to Curatio. “Cyrus and the others have moved on to a mill, and are on their way there now, after encountering a former member of Sanctuary.”

  “Truly?” Curatio asked. “Who was it?”

  “His name is Hiressam,” Alaric said.

  “Sounds like an elven name,” Vaste said with distaste.

  “I recall him well,” Curatio said. “He is indeed an elf—from Traegon, as I recall.” He frowned at Vaste. “And what is wrong with elves?”

  “They’re arrogant and annoying,” Vaste said. “Don’t we have enough arrogant elves among our little band already?”

  “You can never have too many elves,” Curatio said, smiling once more.

  “Yes, you can,” Vaste said. “I think the limit is two, and no more. After that, all you get is arguments about who is oldest and wisest and fairest—and you know, whatever else you people argue about when you get together. The best vegetables, perhaps.” He shuddered.

  “We will take our allies where we can,” Alaric said, “and thus far, he does not exude arrogance. A heavy dose of regret and longing for the old days of Sanctuary, it appears—but not arrogance.”

  “Who wouldn’t consider hanging around with us and killing gods the highlight of their life?” Vaste asked. “I mean, really, how do you even find something exciting to do after that?”

  “You should ask Cyrus and Vara,” Curatio said. “Though I think the answer would involve a door being left open—”

  “Crass,” Vaste said, looking at the door to the Halls of Healing and wishing he could walk through it. He felt a strange tear; duty lay at the mill, with Cyrus and the others, but—

  Had he really seen that troll woman?

  “I can tell the calling of your heart, my brother,” Alaric said. “You should go and look for her.”

  Vaste cocked an eyebrow at him. “Truly?”

  “I will go with Alaric,” Curatio said. “I don’t imagine one more godly weapon will contribute greatly to our fight, and there’s little one healer can do in these conditions.”

  “Go and look for her,” Alaric said, shifting to stand next to Curatio. “I will come and aid you once I’ve returned Curatio to the others.”

  “Well, that’d be two godly weapons out of the task at hand,” Vaste said, shaking his head. “No, you go, Alaric. Help them. I probably won’t get into much trouble on my own—”

  Alaric’s and Curatio’s snickers drowned him out, and he paused, annoyed.

  “Sorry,” Alaric said, “but I find every time someone says something of that sort to me, they immediately land themselves in immense trouble.”

  “You’re not wrong,” Vaste said. “Perhaps you should look in on me after a while.”

  “I will,” Alaric said, putting an arm around Curatio, as the two of them started to fade. “Take great care in following this dictate of your heart, my friend. It is a new world after all, and while we are quite accustomed to you and how you conduct yourself … this city might not be quite ready for two of your kind wandering about.” And with that, he was gone.

  “It never was,” Vaste said, turning upon his heel and going for the door, a spring to his step. “Not even when there were many more of us here.” And off he went to seek out the one who might remain.

  25.

  Cyrus

  “I’m sorry, who are you? What is this?” An insipid, sniffing little man in a black suit with a white shirt hidden beneath it made his way over to Cyrus as they entered the mill. Cyrus could understand the sniffing; the place had an oily, musty smell that irritated his nostrils.

  “This …” Cyrus said, looking around, “… is an inspection.” There was a whole lot of grinding going on, a mechanical monstrosity making deafening noise as it churned, spinning slowly as it worked the grains. He couldn’t entirely see the process, but it was interesting to hear the hisses of hot air being belched out of machinery, the whistle of it out of others. Cyrus would have estimated a hundred, two hundred workers were in this room. Steel catwalks interlaced above them, providing an easy look-down for anyone spying from above. A few souls were doing just that, occasionally shouting down upon the browbeaten workers, every one of whom had the same hangdog look.

  “That’s preposterous,” the little sniffing man said. “Why, we’re paid up with the appropriate authorities. You have no cause to inspect us.”

  Cyrus turned to look at Hiressam. “That’s how it works here? You just pay them and they don’t inspect you?”

  The elf shrugged. “It’s corrupt, yes.”

  “Truly,” Cyrus said, bringing his head back around. Vara stood at his shoulder, her own cloak pulled tight. “No, I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all.”

  “I don’t give a fig for what you like,” the sniffing man said. “If you have a problem with it, take it up with your superiors at the inspection board.”

  Cyrus raised an eyebrow at that, then stepped closer to the little man, whose eyes grew larger. Cyrus recognized the look; he’d just realized for the first time that the big, scary men who normally stood behind him in any dealing with the government weren’t actually, physically standing behind him right now. “I don’t have any superiors,” Cyrus said, “at the inspection board or anywhere else. I am a law unto myself. And my law is about to be applied to the men who run this place.” He leaned in closer, to the point where he could smell the sniffling man’s breath. “Where are the men who work for the Machine?”

  The sniffing man pursed his lips and all the color went out of them. “I—I—”

  “Think very carefully as you answer,” Cyrus said, drawing Praelior. “Ask yourself: ‘Is delaying this large and threatening man—this muscular specimen of decency and goodness’—”

  Vara coughed loudly. “Mmm. Sorry.”

  Cyrus rolled his eyes at her. “‘Is delaying this handsome, large and threatening man worth my very life?’” And Cyrus shot her a sweet look, which she returned by smiling and barely keeping in a laugh. Ah, well. At least she thought it amusing. If he was being honest with himself, half of what he did anymore was to impress or amuse his wife. Turning his attention back to the man, he added, “And trust me—it would only be a short delay. This isn’t a large place, and after turning you into a slippery stain on my boot, I will find them. Quickly.”

  “They are in the offices,” the man said, pointing at a nearby metal staircase that wound its way up to the catwalks above. There in the corner of the room was a large, jutting section of brick that exposed only a few glass windows to hint at its purpose. It looked down over the factory floor, and Cyrus scowled. The workers needed to be watched, he supposed, but they didn’t seem particularly … voluntary. He studied the one closest to him and saw chains. Chains that bound the man into line along with others.

  “What the hell is this all about?” Cyrus asked, leaning to point at one of the chained men. “Do you pay your workers?”

  The sniffling man’s mouth opened. “I—I am not in the payroll department—”

  “Slave labor, then,” Vara said. Her eyes grew narrow and her voice cold.

  “It’s—they’re—” the man started to say.

  Cyrus decked him with one punch, leveling him and knocking him into a piece of mill equipment. It hadn’t been something he’d intended, but neither did
he feel particularly guilty about it. The man slumped, and Cyrus reached down, searching his pockets for keys. He came up with a whole ring of them, black steel and jangling, and tossed them to Hiressam. “See if you can figure out which of those unlocks the chains on these workers. Let’s free the slaves again, shall we?”

  “Aye, m’lord,” Hiressam said, sweeping into action. He leapt down to the nearest machine, with its group of workers huddled around it. They were all staring up now, almost oblivious to the shouts of overseers now thundering down from above. They’d all seen Cyrus’s punch lay out the sniffling man—here and nearly to the end of the mill, Cyrus realized, seeing so many faces looking at him at once.

  “Well,” Cyrus said, shedding his cloak, “no point in bothering with the element of surprise anymore.”

  “Indeed not,” Vara said, carefully draping her own cloak over a nearby railing. Cyrus had merely let his fall to the floor. “When my husband insists on knocking out diminutive idiots who present little to no physical threat. And where the entire mill can see it, no less.”

  “He was basically a slaver and admitted to it,” Cyrus growled, drawing Praelior as the clang of boots on the overhead walks echoed down to him. “Forgive me for not simply letting him walk away after that admission.”

  “I don’t fault you for it,” she said quietly as she drew Ferocis. “Hell, I was considering belting him myself. But,” and here her eyes glimmered with amusement, “you cannot possibly expect me not to give you shit for it, you intemperate man.”

  “‘Handsome, intemperate man,’” Cyrus added. Her smile grew bigger as a couple of thugs drew closer, leaping over the railings to the nearest staircase and running for them both.

  Cyrus blurred into action, ramming Praelior’s hilt into the face of the nearest one. They were wielding daggers again, as though no one in this city save for Hiressam had the sense to carry a blade with some reach to it. At least they could have carried pistols, Cyrus thought, putting the other one down with a viciously hard punch. The man went airborne for a few feet and slammed into a piece of machinery, making it rattle and then grind to a halt.

  “Gee, I hope I didn’t just break something important in this slave shop,” Cyrus said as the deafening noise faded. The sound was quickly replaced by the men who’d been working around the machine. They held up their chains and started to rattle them, shouting a garbled mix of excitement and supplication.

  “I don’t think you’ve broken nearly enough in here,” Vara said, greeting an incoming overseer with a kick that sent the man flying. He hit the catwalks above and the entire upper level shook. Then he came crashing back down on a grinder, and a moment later—

  Cyrus cringed. It wasn’t a pretty thing, what the machine did to a human body. He could clearly hear the sound of crunching bones half a hundred feet away, and the spray of blood was blessedly short, if astoundingly geyser-like. “I don’t know that I would have broken that—or at least not in quite that way,” he said, still cringing. “That’s no way to go, even for a slaver.”

  “My conscience remains clear,” Vara said, raising her gauntlet as another overseer ran up and slashed at her with a whip. She caught the end of the lash on her gauntlet and wrapped it around swiftly, then yanked him forward with the speed granted her by Ferocis. Taken completely by surprise, he flew toward her, and she met him with a punch that smashed his face into a nearly unrecognizable mass.

  Below, Cyrus could see Hiressam hurriedly unchaining the captives. They were running out as soon as they were freed, bolting for the doors in ones and twos. Each manacle had to be unlocked independently, which made Cyrus wonder how exactly they let these people out in the evenings. Probably just keep them chained up everywhere they go, he thought. If they let them leave at all.

  The plight of the slaves was momentarily forgotten as Cyrus heard thundering footsteps above. The door to the office in the corner was now thrown wide, five or six men running above them across the catwalks. The clanking was prodigious, heavy boots on strong metal, but the sway of it at the joints where it was bolted together made it sound as though the whole thing might come crashing down on them at any moment.

  “We’re about to have company,” Cyrus said as Vara threw a punch that sent an overseer into a piece of machinery, hard. He met the metal with his spine, and Cyrus heard something break. The man’s eyes fluttered, and down he went, keeling over as limply as if he’d had his head lopped off.

  Vara showed little interest and even less remorse. “Good. I feel compelled to right many wrongs today, and to make many a man wake up either changed of mind or not wake up at all.”

  “Well, you’re succeeding on that score,” Cyrus said, casting another look to the most recently fallen of the overseers. He didn’t feel much pity for them either; such wantonly cruel inflictions of harm on chained people? And not even prisoners who’d done some terrible wrong like murder. These were slaves, taken against their will and bound for cheap labor. It all turned Cyrus’s stomach, and although he did not wish to do violence to them quite as strongly as his wife did, the desire was still present, burning like an ulcer in the pit of his stomach.

  “HALT!” A voice crackled down from above, and Cyrus looked up. Several of the pairs of boots running across the catwalk had already reached the stairs and were descending. One pair, though …

  One pair was taking its sweet time.

  Cyrus looked over the others. Grubby toughs, exactly what he’d come to expect of the Machine thus far. Interchangeable pieces of corruption, with a foul air and foul aura about them. Their hair was greasy, their skin dirty and ash-streaked in a way that coupled naturally with the cruel expressions that had settled on their faces from long wear. Their black leather coats were the cleanest thing about them, those armbands with the symbology of the Machine clearly issued with the coats in some sort of mass production, to let the people of Reikonos know that they were dealing with the gears of the Machine. The look on their faces, though—Cyrus could always tell a cruel man by looking at him; they had a certain expression almost burned in, like a stain upon them.

  The toughs hung close by the stairwells, watching Cyrus and Vara from across the room as the last of them—the master who’d shouted a halt, descended more slowly, taking his time. Cyrus cast a look at Hiressam; the elf had freed fewer than half the slaves, by Cyrus’s reckoning. There were so many slaves, and so many keys. Cyrus wondered if they all used the same key or if they simply had a different key for every set of manacles. That seemed a ridiculous idea, yet it was taking Hiressam seemingly forever to loose them.

  “What have we here?” Vara asked, coming over to stand by Cyrus as they awaited the ringleader of the Machine’s garrison in the mill. Blood dripped from her left gauntlet, running into the lobstered crevices. “Another of these ignorant fools?”

  Cyrus scanned over the toughs that awaited their master. Once more, he saw some pistols drawn, a few daggers, but not a single one of them possessed a sword with any reach. He reached down to pull one of his own pistols, figuring on firing them all in rapid succession if need be, dropping any of the shooters with his own-placed shots before they could manage to fire. “I’m glad you wore your helm today,” Cyrus said, trying to step carefully in front of Vara.

  She caught his motion and shoved him aside, frowning. “My armor can catch their rounds almost as well as yours.”

  He gave her an even look. “Your mystical steel cannot catch the bullets as well as quartal, my dear. While you may have many superior qualities, the metal of your armor does not become more resistant simply by virtue of you wearing it.”

  She seethed, and then nodded slightly, allowing him to step in front of her. But the moment he did, she took the pistol he had at the small of his back. A click indicated she had drawn back the hammer. He did not bother to look at her, not now, not when he knew she’d be wearing a smile of satisfaction. She placed her wrist on his arm, steadying herself. “I take it by watching your motions that the explosion as these things go
off causes them to jump quite a bit?”

  “Aye,” Cyrus said, seeing the legs of the arch villain of this place emerge around the last set of stairs from the catwalk. “Keep your hand on Ferocis when you fire and it shouldn’t be much of a problem. More startling than anything, but I expect if you didn’t handle it properly, it might throw off your aim.”

  “We wouldn’t want that now, would we?” Vara asked, breathing slowly and steadily behind him.

  “Indeed not,” came the voice of their enemy, descending now the last set of steps. If there had been any doubt in Cyrus’s mind that this fellow was of a different mold than the toughs that surrounded him, watching him descend the stairs put an end to that notion.

  He wore fine leather boots that had plenty of mud and dirt on them. They rose to mid-calf, and were met there by bloused pants. Not the sort a simple dandy would wear, either; coupled with the dirty boots, Cyrus already formed the image of a man who was equally comfortable fitting into society or getting his hands dirty in the manner he chose. The man wore a long waistcoat, black like any Machine member, and it covered a red tunic of the old style, the sort Cyrus hadn’t seen yet in this city. It was all very well made, and a sword peeked out from beneath the coat at his waist. The man had his hand on the pommel, and the look on his face when he came down the last set of steps?

  Pure cruelty, mingled with a resonant confidence. His hair was shoulder length and dark, and his face was ruddy enough that Cyrus’s image of a man who was no dandy was confirmed. His knuckles looked worn, like they’d thrown their share of punches, but his face lacked scars, which told Cyrus he was good enough to avoid being hit.

  “I suppose you call yourself Cyrus Davidon,” the man said, looking amused. He shifted his gaze to Vara. “And that means you don’t have to tell me what your name is, darling.”

  “Oh, I’m looking forward to putting one of these bullets between this one’s eyes,” Vara said.