Ghosts of Sanctuary

by Robert J. Crane

  “She is not as strong as she once was,” Shirri said, eyes flicking up. “And they took her in her sleep, I believe. Probably gagged her, or perhaps knocked her unconscious.”

  “The Machine doesn’t much like dealing with squirming captives,” Hiressam said, his smooth voice like a balm to Cyrus’s jangling nerves. “In their kidnapping activities, it is very common for them to club their victims insensate. More than a few have died in the process, but it keeps things quiet.”

  “Have you had many dealings with the Machine?” Vara asked him.

  “Here and there,” Hiressam said, shifting in his seat. “I have opposed them often, though never as grandly or obviously as you have this day. I have fought them in quiet places, struck them where there was no chance to be seen.” He looked down, plainly uncomfortable. “They are without honor, and I considered fighting them to be no less than a charge given me by …” He cleared his throat. “Well, it was a duty for me, and one I undertook as often as I could, but … that was not terribly often. They move in numbers, they do so boldly, in daylight. The city watch is theirs, for all intents and purposes, and turns a blind eye—”

  “An Alaric eye, I like to call it,” Vaste said.

  “—to their activities,” Hiressam said, undeterred by the troll’s interruption, though he did evince a confused expression for just a beat. “That makes it difficult to oppose them without exposing yourself. To do so means that they will come for you. And there is not a corner of Reikonos where their influence does not extend. Cross them, and if they should find out about it, they will find you. And they will make an example of you.” He swallowed and looked down again.

  “Who runs this organization?” Alaric asked. “Whose hand guides—”

  “Whose arse sits upon the throne of the Machine?” Vaste asked.

  “What an incredibly inelegant way to ask the same damned question as Alaric,” Vara said.

  “Elegance is for little girls in dance classes,” Vaste said. “I like my way better.”

  “It was delightfully crass and to the point,” Birissa said, nodding in agreement, the suckling pig now little but bones.

  “I could not say,” Hiressam said. “Whoever they are, they have guessed at the truth of their vulnerability. If I had such a name? I would go straight for them. Bury my blade in their neck in silence if need be, and let the Machine fall to pieces without them.” He shook his head. “No. Who runs them is a carefully guarded secret, of necessity. There are many who would oppose the Machine, both from places of honor, such as I do, and also baser motives. There are countless criminals in this city who feel their fortunes would rise if the Machine would but move aside and permit their competition.”

  “And they hold the levers of government, too?” Cyrus asked, thumping a palm upon the table, feeling the grain of the wood upon his bare hand. “How high does that go?”

  “Not too high, I would say.” Hiressam reached out, pulling a dish of spinach mixed with a heavy cream close to him. He spooned some out on his plate experimentally, then tried it. Apparently satisfied, he took another scoop while answering. “For example, the Lord Protector remains above their influence. He probably does not even realize what is going on down here.”

  Cyrus frowned. “How can you be sure?” He leaned toward Hiressam. “If this powerful fellow has a corrupt watch and countless—I don’t know, whatever instrument of elected government they have across Reikonos—how do you know he’s not in on the scheme and just collecting the profits from his tower?”

  Hiressam stared at Cyrus blankly. “I … can not believe you would say that of the Lord Protector.”

  Cyrus stared at him. “Why would I not? I don’t know this man—”

  “But you do,” Hiressam said, his fork clattering to the plate. “You do know him. We all do,” and here he looked to Vara, to Alaric and Curatio, and Vaste. “Of course you know him. He is one of ours, one of our very own, and his honor is unquestioned.”

  “I think Cyrus just questioned it,” Vaste said, far too happy for Cyrus’s taste.

  “That’s because I don’t know who he is,” Cyrus said, shooting a vicious look at the troll. “But I would like to know his name before I decide that I’m not going to criticize him.” He looked squarely at Hiressam. “Who is this Lord Protector?”

  Hiressam stared at him, and all sound seemed to cease save for Birissa working her way through a piece of fat ham. For a long moment, he simply blinked, his lips barely parted, until he spoke. “Why, it’s Lord Longwell, of course,” he said, and the silence seemed to rise as his words echoed through the hall.

  34.

  “Longwell!” Cyrus said, coming to his feet so swiftly he nearly knocked the table over. Everyone recoiled from the fearsome clatter, save for Birissa, who snatched up the rest of the ham that threatened to topple off and then proceeded to devour it, surprisingly quietly. “We should go to him immediately. If he’s in charge, he’ll help us put things to the right with this Machine.”

  “I don’t know that that’s true,” Hiressam said carefully, his hands folded neatly in his lap. “He hasn’t been seen in public for nearing a year.”

  “And,” Shirri said from her place at the end of the table, dripping sarcasm as the shadows played heavily under her eyes, “I’m sure he’ll take the news of your joyous return with the same seriousness as he treats all such reports—none at all.”

  Cyrus frowned. “You’re telling me if I go to his gates—”

  “Well, he lives in the Citadel,” Hiressam said, “so—”

  “The guards will laugh you off without so much as a hearing,” Shirri said bluntly. “They get Cyrus Davidon impersonators like you every day. More convincing ones, even.”

  “I move with the speed of a god,” Cyrus said, voice rising as he stared her down, “and can use magic where few can. How are there better impersonators than I?”

  “There are some … very good ones out there,” Hiressam said apologetically. “Some of them … I even thought might have been truly you.”

  “You’ve met me!” Cyrus erupted. “And you didn’t think I was real when you crossed my path earlier today!”

  “Once burned, always shy of the dragon’s mouth thereafter,” Hiressam said, shifting his gaze downward.

  “Well, my crowd of admirers seemed to realize who I was,” Cyrus said.

  “And dispersed quite smartly after we blew up that coal yard,” Vara said. “Some before they entirely lost their hearing, I hope.”

  “That was just as well,” Cyrus waved her off. “We didn’t need company following us to the mill.”

  “Yes, what if they’d seen you get your arse handed to you by that human?” Vaste asked. “Truly, your following would have been over, possibly for good. Or else transferred to that Gaull fellow, which would be bad news for us indeed.”

  Cyrus tensed at the mere mention of Gaull’s name. “We have business to attend to out there. Why are we huddling in here?”

  “Because there are answers we seek before we strike out blindly once more,” Alaric said, breaking the quiet that had settled over his end of the table. “I am not above a good mystery or two—”

  “Or fifty,” Vaste said. “A hundred. Ten thousand, maybe—”

  “—But we are currently in the service of you, Shirri,” he said. The young lady at the end of the table looked up at him. “And while I am content that we are doing right in helping you—it sits ill with me that your secrets seem to be the sort that are blowing back upon us like—”

  “Troll farts in a tight space,” Vaste said.

  “Good one,” Birissa said. “Spot on.”

  “—like … anything but that,” Alaric said, seeming to have lost the thread of his thought. “We need to know more than what you have told us if you wish our continued assistance,” he said, directing his words firmly toward Shirri. “These secrets carry a peril that seems to be visiting itself upon us—”

  “A secret that someone is keeping that is bringing us t
o peril?” Vaste clutched at his chest. “Why, I’ve never heard of such a thing happening in Sanctuary!”

  Alaric’s eye twitched slightly. “All jests aside—”

  “I will never put my jests aside. You’ll have to pry them from my cold, dead hands.”

  “That could be arranged,” Curatio said, looking to Alaric. “Perhaps if we kill him, it will serve as an example to the other younglings to stop harping at us about our secrets—which are no longer secret, I might add.”

  “I have a godly weapon and a troll woman with a sword,” Vaste said. “Come at me with everything you have, healer.”

  Birissa looked sideways at him, frowning. “Don’t include me in your mad plans. I barely know you.”

  “I have a godly weapon and a hole in my heart,” Vaste said, still staring at Curatio. “Come at me and I’ll strike your aged groin from your body.”

  “I believe Curatio was making a jest of his own,” Alaric said.

  “I probably was,” Curatio said dryly. “It’s so difficult to tell anymore, my aged mind being not what it once was. However, my aged gr—”

  “Let me stop this before it gets ugly … er,” Cyrus said, holding up a hand. “I agree with Alaric. Long have we of Sanctuary embraced difficult causes and charged headlong into—”

  “Death,” Vaste said.

  “—difficult circumstances,” Cyrus said, avoiding Vaste’s choice of words. “Even while our own kept secrets that might have been useful to know. But that trust does not extend to an utter stranger.” And here he looked down the table at Shirri. “If you wish our aid … we need to know more than you are presently telling us.”

  She blinked at him, looking dully down the table. Then she stood. “No.”

  “Shirri—” Alaric began.

  She waved a hand at him as she turned her back, striding across the Great Hall and through the doors to the foyer. Cyrus watched her, even as Alaric and Curatio called her name. She made it to the doors and opened them, disappearing out of Sanctuary without speaking a word or turning back.

  “See, I can admire the lengths she just went to in keeping her secret,” Vaste said. “She just walked out on the only people who have tried to protect her from this Machine. Indeed, the only ones that probably stand any chance of defending her or retrieving her magical mother from their clutches.” He drummed his nails against the table, causing Vara to give him an ireful look. “That’s real commitment to your secrets right there. I feel like even the people at this table could learn something from that.”

  “His death would be such a wonderful example to the rest,” Curatio said to Alaric.

  “Hush,” Alaric said. “If a few japes from Vaste is the only price we pay for keeping so much from them, it is a small punishment indeed.”

  “I could make more japes,” Vaste said, and received a withering glare from Alaric that indicated to Cyrus his patience had run out. “Or just … keep it at the current level, then. Perhaps even be a bit more sparing.”

  “Are we just going to let her walk out, then?” Hiressam asked.

  “We can hardly compel her to stay by force,” Alaric said. “Nor can we continue to throw ourselves into the fight on her behalf without any of the guidance she might provide us.”

  “The hell we can’t,” Vara said, drawing every eye to her. “We’ve fought for money at various points, Alaric. Death and danger for gold—”

  “That’s not quite right,” Cyrus said. “We were sympathetic to the aims of the Human Confederation when we took their gold to defend Livlosdald and Leaugarden, or to eject the dark elves from Prehorta—”

  “But we took gold nonetheless,” Vara said, “for something we felt needed to be done. Here, I think, we face a similar circumstance.” Her face darkened. “This Machine seems to me to be the worst possible outcome of city living. All the vile dregs of humanity clustered together to prey upon the weak. They possess all the decorum of a pack of wolves and none of the grace. I would happily strike the head of every one of them from their shoulders for nothing more than the satisfaction of doing so.”

  “It’s quite fun, killing them,” Birissa said, now holding a roll in her hand. “They make the most delightful squeals when you crush them into an airship engine. I should like to hear that sound again.”

  “And she seemed so civilized, too,” Cyrus said.

  “There’s hardly anything civilized about what their lot does, little man,” Birissa said, giving Cyrus barely a glance before attacking the roll. She practically swallowed it whole before continuing. “As your lady protector there said—they work in packs. It’s law of nature for them, not the law of man. Reason won’t work. Talking won’t work—I’m happy to negotiate with someone if they show a spark of decency. But if they don’t—” And her hand fell to her cloak, tearing it open, whereupon it emerged a second later with a blade nearly the size of Vara. Birissa whipped it up and around expertly, bringing the tip down to the floor with the barest clink, perfect control keeping her from chipping the stone floor. “I have ways of dealing with that, too. Same as yours, I expect.” And she shoved another roll in her mouth.

  “I may have to be excused for a short interval,” Vaste said, his voice high. “I’m feeling a bit … flushed … everywhere.”

  “It’s not hard to see why, either,” Vara said. “You’ve finally found a woman who lines up perfectly with everything you’ve ever loved—good food, good conversation, excessively violent—why, she’s practically the female troll equivalent of Cyrus.” Vara’s eyebrows moved subtly.

  “I—I—what?” Cyrus asked, taken aback.

  “She is nothing like—” Vaste looked sideways as Birissa stared at Vara, then Cyrus, with suspicion. Vaste’s mouth was frozen open, his finger extended, and he took a long breath before turning back to Vara, and saying, with just a hint of surrender, “Please don’t ruin this for me.”

  “I’m going to take this as a compliment,” Birissa said, her own eyes narrowed and her hands empty of food, “seeing how as you seem to be quite fond of the black-armored little morsel. But if I catch a whiff of insult, know that the punishment for enraging me is to have your limbs plucked off one by one.”

  “And … do you eat them, then?” Vara asked with mild curiosity.

  Birissa just stared back at her. “No. Because I’m civilized.” And she lifted a tankard and drained it in one long pull. Setting it down, she looked at Vaste, reached down, and plucked up his hand as she rose. “Come on, then, you.”

  Vaste stared at her paw upon his. “What?”

  She took hold of him and dragged him from his seat. “Give me a tour of this place.” And she moved toward the doors to the foyer with Vaste in tow.

  Cyrus watched them go with some relief. “She’s really quite … forceful, isn’t she?”

  “As good a match for Vaste as I could’ve imagined,” Alaric said.

  “He could use someone to keep him in bounds,” Vara said.

  Hiressam swallowed visibly. “You think she’s going to … bind him?”

  “Not quite what I meant,” Vara said, lips curling in distaste. “Thank you for that.”

  Cyrus looked toward Alaric. “What do we do now?”

  Alaric let the thought brew for a moment, and then spoke. “We find ourselves in a curious position. I agree with Vara—destroying this Machine is something we would do anyway, regardless of Shirri, for the harm they inflict upon the people of Reikonos.”

  “How is that a ‘curious position’?” Vara asked. “It seems eminently reasonable to me.”

  “So does a vegetarian diet,” Cyrus said, looking at the thin arrangement of lettuce and other greenery on her plate. “But I try not to hold it against you.”

  “Wise on your part,” Vara shot back at him. “Considering the hold I seem to have over you in so many ways.”

  “I think we should take a short interval to reconsider our strategy,” Alaric said. “To rest, to recover from your wounds—and then redouble our efforts against the Ma
chine.” He clenched his gauntlet tight and put it down on the table. “There are mysteries here, and if Shirri does not wish to enlighten us about them, it does not absolve us of the fact that she summoned us for our help. Our obligation remains, if not to her, then to the people of Reikonos, who live in fear of the Machine.” He lowered his head, staring straight forward. “So we will rest. And we will plan. And we will reassess … and then we will come forth and crush this Machine with everything we have.”

  35.

  Shirri

  “They’re all mad,” Shirri muttered to herself as she emerged from the alley onto the main thoroughfare. “Mad and fools and …” She let her voice trail off as the soft, hazy light of day shone down upon her from above.

  Shirri blended into the crowd milling along the street. It was hardly the busiest she’d seen it; the morning traffic had died off, replaced by the market traffic of midday. People going to pick up food and wares, not bustling to the nearest factory to arrive before the starting whistle blew. She moved among the crowd with her head down, watching carefully for signs of the Machine’s lackeys, the tendrils that seemed to be ever reaching for her.

  The smell of thick smoke as Reikonos’s factories belched heavily upon the city in the throes of midday production intruded upon Shirri’s thoughts. It was always worse at this time of day; some factories did run all night, but not nearly so many as during the daylight hours. The sun, as ever, remained stubbornly clouded by smog.

  “They’re crazy,” Shirri muttered under her breath. The conclusion was inescapable; no matter how reasonable Alaric seemed, he carried a sword and wore armor and talked of honor even as he somehow swirled into a vortex of mist, as though he’d been born from one of the innumerable smokestacks around the city. And Curatio, that timeless elf? He might have been even worse, throwing his mace out of hand and leaving himself defenseless so that Shirri would have to reveal her ability. Why, he’d probably done it on purpose, and she’d played right into his hands. Her cheeks burned at that thought of being had by them in such a way.