by Jack Conner
Propping himself up on a cane with one gelatinous limb, Segrul struck a local woman with a whip in the other. She screamed and arched her back. Blood oozed through her shirt. He struck again, something savage flickering across what passed for his face. The pity Avery felt vanished. The woman screamed louder and collapsed to the ground under the third blow, but Segrul didn’t stop. He kept striking, and striking, even as moisture flew from him and blood pooled under her. She writhed, growing weaker.
One of the local men lunged to help, but a gun fired and he pitched backward, dead. When another man and a woman both moved together to help the woman, they were cut down, too.
Segrul raised his whip, brought it down.
Blood flew.
“Damnit,” Janx said, making a fist. It shook in anger. “We should go out there and twist that bastard’s head off.”
“Don’t,” Avery said. “We’d end up getting shot, too.”
Crack.
The woman screamed so loud her voice broke.
Janx started forward, but Avery and Sheridan held him back, and at last he relented. By that point, the woman had either fainted or died, as she was limp and silent. By the amount of blood, Avery feared it was the latter. Pirates carted her away, and Segrul’s people continued the push toward the pen, then began shoving the prisoners into it. While the deed was being accomplished, Segrul limped toward the front doors of the Triach’s mansion, several underlings in tow. Two helped him up the steps. He was twice as big as either of them.
Even as he disappeared into the mansion, a zeppelin set down on the lawn of the mall. Surrounded by worshippers, Thraish emerged to great fanfare. The pirates bowed, then offered a sacrifice to the Muugist, who accepted on the spot. Still surrounded by priests and acolytes, he followed Segrul into the mansion.
Frowning, Avery watched as the pirates began patrolling the grounds around the mansion; presumably they had already searched it and tossed its former occupants, the Triarch’s family, into rape rooms or the pen—that’s if they hadn’t killed them outright.
“We need to get into the mansion,” Avery said. “That’s where the transmitter will be, right?”
“Yeah," said Janx.
“And possibly the Sleeper’s head, too,” Sheridan added.
“I wish Hildy were here,” Janx said. “She coulda gotten in anywhere.”
“Me, too, Janx,” Avery said. To Sheridan: “Can you see a way in?”
“The sewer, possibly. We know our way around it a little now, or at least have some idea what to expect. Of course, if it were me organizing the mansion’s defense, that wouldn’t be possible. I would have the sewers guarded, or at least their nearest entrance.”
“Segrul ain’t no dummy,” Janx said, his voice grim. “He’ll have someone ready to blow our heads off as soon as we stuck them up.”
“I believe you,” Sheridan said. “What, then?”
“We go in as pirates.”
Finding some pirates to steal the identities from turned out to be easy. Loosely organized groups of them were going all over town, breaking into houses, some of which were heavily defended, seizing the occupants and loading them into trucks or prodding them toward the mansion. The pen there seemed to be the main one, which made sense if the people were being offered as sacrifices to the Muugists, although if so it was a sacrifice on a scale that Avery had never heard of. He and Janx simply waited to either side of a doorway while Sheridan, disarranging her clothes to reveal more skin than she normally did, lay sprawled on the threshold. They had waited until a relatively small gang of pirates passed by, no more than half a dozen, and the pirates, seeing an unconscious and scantily-clad woman, predictably approached, intrigued but not wary. When they drew close, Avery and Janx stepped out from hiding and shot two in the head, then another two, while Sheridan drew her own pistol out from under her and dispatched the final pair.
The three dragged the bodies inside, then spent some time donning clothes and carving off mutations, which they adorned to their own face and bodies (Avery’s own mutations were so subtle he was forced to do this, as well, to appear properly altered), before proceeding back towards the Triarch’s Mansion.
As they went, Janx adjusted the string of five alchemically-shrunken heads he wore at his waist; the chief of the pirate gang had worn them. Now Janx, looking ludicrous with the turtle-like beak he now wore over the lower half of his face, took the place as chief.
“Each head signifies a step up the rung in Segrul’s service,” he said through the beak as they walked. “Five heads means the asshole who wore this was one of the Gray’s toppers. Must have been about some private business, since he wasn’t leadin’ a larger group.”
“I think we know what sort of business he was about,” Sheridan said.
Janx inclined his turtle head. “Anyway, we should have no trouble gettin’ into the mansion.”
As they moved, they heard periodic gunfire, and Avery said, “Is that the sound of pirates celebrating or is there still resistance?”
“It probably means that the townspeople were able to organize some defense,” Sheridan said. “There must be pockets of resistance scattered about, barricades and street-to-street fighting The rest of the people are either penned up or in hiding.”
“They should form up,” Avery said. “Band together like the ones resisting.”
Sheridan nodded overhead, indicating the dirigibles and zeppelins. “Not with them pinning everyone down. No, if they’re not safe behind the barricades by now they’re not likely to be.”
The group had been moving down alleys, but when they started noticing pirate patrols sweeping through the back streets they forced themselves onto the main roads and continued toward the Triarch’s Mansion along the sidewalks. Bodies and bombed-out houses surrounded them, and in some places the pirates had hung corpses from lampposts as a warning to any townspeople who would fight back. The corpses had been terribly disfigured, with arms chopped off or intestines spilling down to the victims’ knees or blackened from fire.
The three entered the heart of downtown, very close to the mansion now. Lights blazed from the intact buildings, and music swelled out over the sound of coarse laughter and, sometimes, screams. The pirates had occupied the finer houses of the gentry, what were left of them, and some were amusing themselves with the captives.
Bands of non-reveling pirates still kept order, though, and packs of them prowled the occupied quarter as zeppelins swept the area with floodlights. Few of the pirates paid Avery’s group much attention, but of those that did Janx had only to authoritatively, even menacingly, pat his string of shrunken heads, and they kept on going. The three stopped at the plaza before the mansion, where a great deal of activity still buzzed around the central pen.
Avery cocked his head as gunshots peppered the night in the distance. “If we get separated,” he said, “go in that direction. There’s still resistance there. Maybe we can find some friends there if we need to.”
“They’d just as likely shoot us as not, Doc,” Janx said. “More likely.”
“Hopefully it won’t come to that.”
They braced themselves, then moved across the mall toward the mansion’s open gates. Statues and monuments rose all around the plaza, but the main focus of the area at the moment, of course, remained the massive pen and the prisoners being forced into it. They were evidently still being collected.
“I don’t get it,” Janx said, as the group swung wide around the pen. “If these blokes are to be sacrificed, wouldn’t the pirates be force-feeding them bad seafood by now?”
“That’s true,” said Sheridan. “It doesn’t make sense to me either.”
They passed through the gaping black gates and picked their way down the lane winding to the vine-overgrown mansion. When they reached the steps leading into the building, the guards on duty there stopped them. Avery had seen several other parties coming and going, however, and he wasn’t overly worried about gaining admittance. Segrul would be busy issu
ing orders and supervising the occupation, and the mansion would have received many visitors. Sure enough, when Janx thumped his string of heads and said, “I’ve got business with the Gray,” the guards shrugged and let his company pass.
“What now?” Janx said, as the door closed behind them.
“I have no idea,” Avery said, feeling very much out of his depth.
“Well, this is your party, Doc, so snap to it.”
“We have to find the radio first,” Sheridan said. “That’s the easy one. We’ll worry about the Sleeper’s head later.”
Noises sprang from all around, but mostly from the second level; outside, Avery hadn’t been aware of the ruckus, as so much noise existed there already, but inside the sounds could clearly be distinguished: laughter, screams and, oddly, the sound of a piano. Avery stiffened as a small group of pirates, laughing and drunken, clattered down the grand set of stairs that rose in stately fashion from the lobby floor and made their way toward the front door. The pirates slowed as they saw Avery and the others still stationed before it. Avery scurried out of the way, and Sheridan glided to the side, but Janx lingered.
What was he doing? Avery wanted to scream at him to get out of the way. Didn’t he realize he was about to get caught? Sweat stung Avery’s eyes as he waited.
“I’m s’posed to send out a message,” Janx said nonchalantly. “Where’s the transmitter?”
One of the pirates hiked his thumb up the stairs. “In a room off the lib’rary, where Boss is holdin’ court.”
They blundered past and went outside.
Avery and Sheridan rejoined the big man. Avery realized that he was shaking. That had been too close.
“Nice work,” he told Janx, but the whaler just shrugged.
“I suppose that means the whole fleet isn’t gathered yet,” Sheridan said.
“Oh, it’s gathered, but they’ve got some individual boats out piratin’,” Janx said. “Raising hell and distracting any pirate hunters from the main force.”
Avery flinched at a nearby shriek and turned, but he could only see a dining room through a set of double archways. Beyond it, though, he heard the clatter of plates, the crack of a whip and the gasp of someone in pain.
“They’ve captured the kitchen staff,” he heard himself say, “and are forcing them to cook.” It was as if he’d wandered into some distorted version of gentility, a society not run on money but slave labor.
“I could eat,” Janx said, apparently not put off by it. Then again, he would be used to this sort of thing. Avery shuddered to think of him participating in similar revels and tried to block the image out. “Besides, you don’t expect Segrul’s lot to do the cooking, do you, in their hour of triumph?”
“Let’s go,” Sheridan said, and started up the stairs.
Avery gathered the threads of his courage—they were feeling pretty tattered at the moment—and followed, with Janx bringing up the rear. Upstairs, pirates came to and from various rooms, some grim-faced and obviously about the business of war, some laughing and drunken and indulging in occupation. Some dragged naked girls and boys in chains from some room in the western wing toward bedrooms or at least rooms they were using as bedrooms. Avery winced as he passed one room whose door tilted open. Inside two pirates were raping a girl.
“Keep movin’,” Janx said from behind him and prodded Avery forward. He went, but woodenly.
Sheridan didn’t seem to be coping with it well, either. Avery couldn’t see her face, but he recognized the stiffness in her posture and the abrupt way she spun at the corners. The group moved in the direction of the noise and activity, navigating their way down the western wing where the library must be. Soon they paused at the ornate archway leading into what turned out to be a grand library, all mahogany and brass, with gleaming dark shelves and elaborate scrollwork.
The pirates had cleared out a small raised area and made it into a sort of stage, and now a pair of pirates on either side (but lower) were whipping two naked young women, forcing them to wrestle. A comic dwarf (a fellow pirate, apparently) pranced around poking them in the backsides. Before the stage clustered a sea of seats and things that were being used as seats, and there Segrul and the pirate officers celebrated their victory. Segrul sat right before the stage with a naked captive girl beside him cooling him with a reed fan, and his great bulk quivered every time one of the fighters screamed or got in a good blow or otherwise entertained him. The fan-girl’s right eye, which had filled with tears, had been blackened and there were bruises around her nipples and thighs.
“He has a fuckin’ fool now,” Janx muttered, eyes on the dwarf. “I guess that shouldn’t surprise me.”
“He’s a monster,” Avery said.
Slowly, Janx nodded, and his gaze went somewhere far away. When he spoke next, it was with lethal grimness. “I know, Doc. Oh I know. An’ he’ll get his first chance I get him alone.”
A man brushed past them and bent to whisper in Segrul’s ear hole. The pirate admiral nodded, then said something back. The visitor, likely one of the captains leading the war or else a messenger for one, nodded and strode off, again brushing past Avery’s group on the way out. Segrul’s attention went back to the show, and in seconds he was laughing again.
“Some way to run a war, ain’t it?” Janx said.
“Has he always been this way?” Avery said.
“Oh, hell no. This is downright civilized. He used to torture people to death on whatever stage was handy, and this was before he’d gotten religion. This is him being subdued.”
“There’s where the transmitter will be,” said Sheridan, indicating a side room whose door stood ajar. It opened on another level, fairly far from the stage. She cocked her lopsided fish head at Janx, who nodded and pushed forward into the library, then began threading his way through the pirates who lounged in back of the main room toward the far door. Avery and Sheridan followed.
A few pirates cursed them, a few looked at them questioningly and then glanced away when they saw the string of heads, going back to talking in low voices or sharing a smoke of what smelled like yabiv, a substance illegal in most places. At last the three reached the doorway and slipped inside.
The pirate stationed over the transmitter looked up.
“Shit,” said Janx.
Sheridan closed the door behind them. No lock.
“What are you doing he—”
Before the pirate could complete his last word, Janx had traversed the distance between them and seized him by the throat. The pirate, a brightly-colored fish-man with a blue-with-yellow-stripe-and-within-it-turquoise scales, grabbed at the gun at his hip. Janx clamped a hand over his wrist and squeezed harder with his other hand, and the pirate’s legs thrashed in the air and drummed against the wall for a few moments before there came an audible crack. The man’s neck had snapped. Janx carefully sat him down, not wanting to make any more noise than he already had.
“Did they hear that?” Avery said, meaning the pirate kicking the wall.
“We’d better hope that if they did they don’t care,” Sheridan said, then bent to inspect the transmitter. “It looks to be operating just fine. This guy must have been waiting to hear reports from the ships they still have out.” She picked up some pieces of paper on the desk beside the transmitter, which were stirring slightly from the breeze through the window; through it Avery could see, as a gust of wind tore aside the drapes, the wraparound balcony. “He was keeping notes on their positions and time tables. I guess he, or Segrul, is expecting the rest of the island to come to the aid of this city, and they want all their forces gathered when that happens.”
“Does that mean the Monastery really is in this city?” Avery said.
“Why else would they be here? You were right about that, I think.”
Janx dragged the body to the side. “It could just be to gather sacrifices.”
“I don’t think they’d bring their entire fleet into play for a few sacrifices, or even many,” Avery said. “There m
ust be something else going on.” He sat himself down before the transmitter. “Anyway, I’d better get started.”
He began pressing buttons, and it wasn’t long before he was connected to operators in Salanth, then to the Palace. Ani and her mother-in-law were sleeping, but they quickly came to the phone, and Avery spoke to each of them in turn as Janx and Sheridan kept guard on the door. Avery’s voice choked when he spoke with Ani, and he couldn’t help but veer from the script after he’d instructed her on what to say to Prime Minister Denaris in Hissig; he asked her how she’d been doing.
“I’m fine, Papa. Hild had a tummy-ache yesterday, but he’s better now. And I think Duke Triass is beginning to warm up to me now. He’s no longer poisoning the other nobles against me.”
“That’s great,” Avery said, though he knew absolutely nothing of what she spoke. She had her own life separate from him now, he realized sadly, one that he was not a part of. A sudden pang in his chest made him hold his breath for a moment.
“Are you okay, Papa?”
“I’m fine, honey. Are you learning to like Salanth any better?”
“The dark really bothered me at first, but Mama Issia has shown me her solar room, which actually glows with real sunlight, or what seems like real sunlight. I spend some time in there each day.” She paused. “Are we really going to war, Papa?”