by Jeffrey Hall
Requiem put his mouth to the tartwich again, but Grey suddenly stood.
Requiem followed to where he was looking and saw a lone figure upon a horse coming down the far-off road. It was dark enough that they could only see the rider’s shape juxtaposed against the falling dusk. A black, fluttering figure exalted by the bleeding red of the sky like a bird soaring over the ground in search of prey.
“Keep going. Keep going, you dirty-handed spritz,” whispered Grey.
The figure slowed to a trot. Requiem could see its head turning, looking, searching for something in the coming dark. There was movement. Something was poked into the air. Red light burst from its top.
Requiem’s hand immediately went to the hilt of his blade as he stood beside the coach.
Grey stepped into one of the red rays reaching out from the burst across the grass like a blood-drenched claw. He held his palms up. “Hail, friend. Fine evening for a ride.”
The figure held the light higher. The sanguine glow touched the feet of Garp, who was still asleep in the grass.
“My boy had too much low.” Grey held up his tartwich. “You’re welcome to sup with us if you’d like.”
The figure’s cloak fluttered in the wind, making it look like the night was trying to pull it back into its grasp. Requiem didn’t like the way it just stood there without words.
“Won’t you reveal yourself, friend?” called Grey. “The dark makes us all strangers, does it not?”
The red light was extinguished, sucked back into the tip of the object as if it were a bubble in a straw. The figure turned its horse and continued down the road, where its head kept turning, kept searching for what, only the shadows knew.
Only when it was out of sight completely did Requiem remove his hand from Ruse.
Grey exhaled. “By the Abyss…”
“That light. Ever seen a stone make it before?”
“No, but haven’t seen half the stones and what they can do.” Grey sat down and continued eating his tartwich.
Requiem kept standing, watching the darkness to see if it would bring the figure back. “What do you think they were looking for?”
“Maybe they lost their pup.”
Requiem raised an eyebrow, surprised at a joke from the man.
“Lot of things lost these days. Lot of people searching for things. Just glad they weren’t looking for something that wasn’t theirs.”
Requiem looked at the coach. The white robe of the girl fluttered from the edge of the wagon, a white flag of surrender without an enemy to see it.
The town of Pink rose from the ground like a corrupted patch of skin, flesh colored, its buildings bumpy and round. Acne upon the bare land of the middle Rone, the part of Moonsland nearest Bothane. Holes havocked the surrounding land, deep mines cut to find the peach-colored gems that grew in abundance beneath the soil. Tardine. Lizard’s fruit. Paladite. Gems that could be drawn on for their healing powers by a Geomage that knew how to use them. The settling dusk of that fourth day on the road only accentuated the town’s color.
“There she is,” said Garp. “Our lady in waiting.”
“One leg down and we’re still here,” said Grey.
Garp swung his head around the side of the coach. “Maybe we didn’t need you after all.”
Requiem was fine with it. Since the first night and the appearance of the stranger they’d only come across a handful of other travelers, each of them too busy or concerned with their own business to offer anything other than a nod.
It was a boring journey really, with nothing to keep Requiem’s mind occupied other than the landscape, trying to figure out the girl and keep her watered, and the occasional song sung by Garp, a thing that Grey desperately tried to stop every time.
But now with Pink in the near distance there was potential to break up the monotony of the road. Maybe there would be some answers about the girl within?
They passed the main gate, an arch constructed from finely polished ore and encrusted with the town’s three main jewels. The denizens of Pink—frosted with the rose dust of the soil beneath them—barely took notice of the newcomers, considering them as nothing more than another group of miners returning with their load.
Like Drip, Requiem’s business as one of the Scarred had only taken him through the town minimally. Once to take care of a wild davlish chewing up their tardine stashes, another time to track down a stolen shipment of goods taken by a pair of thieves preying on the outer-edge towns. Both were early in his career. He hoped that those people of Pink who’d seen him were either dead or had forgotten him. That, or his hood would hide him enough to keep them from recognizing him and kicking him out altogether.
Garp and Grey, on the other hand, were remembered. Were known.
“Hail, Driplanders!” shouted someone from the mingling crowd. And it was Garp that always did the answering.
“Oy! Good to see you!”
“Garp, back again, whole and breathing!” said another.
“Wouldn’t be any other person.” Garp worked the crowd like a king, waving and winking, calling out others by name. In Drip he was a miner, but in Pink he was royalty. Requiem smiled at how Grey shifted and kept his head down every time Garp would call out.
They rolled their way through the main road, making their way to a domed building whose roof had been painted white and aerated with small, finger-sized holes to let certain metals they stored in there breathe. The locals called it the Hive, but it was just a warehouse, a temporary stop for metals and stones before they were scooped up and shipped out to the rest of Moonsland.
They entered it through a bay operated by two women clad in pink tunics and shawls, working ropes to open and close the gate like the joints on a massive jaw.
“What you got for us, Garp?” said one of the women as they passed.
“Only the best of Drip,” he answered.
The woman laughed and waved them through. After the coach passed, the bay door closed, leaving the light to come through the holes in the roof, scattering over an assortment of stones below like a thousand nesting yellow bugs. Though the majority of Pink looked blanched and fleshy, the inside of the Hive was a gathering of color. All manner of stone was stored there, not just the peach-colored trio found beneath Pink. Clink from all over the world had been deposited there, and laid in piles were all colors of a rainbow, all colors of the Abyss.
As Requiem’s eyes adjusted to the light he couldn’t tell if things sparkled because of the pinpricks of sun coming through or if it was from the natural luster of the stones. The warehouse smelled strongly of butter and sweat, smells likely achieved from the stock of minatite and yellium they had stored somewhere within.
A man upon a belly-grup scurried over to meet them. He wore a black shirt saturated in dust. The belly-grup he rode upon had gold scales and a red underbelly. Its large blue eyes moved independent of one another, mechanical almost, like something inside of its flat skull pulled levers to make them shift. The man on its back pulled out a long scroll whose bottom lay attached to its saddle.
“Names?” said the man.
“C’mon, Laraby, you know our names,” said Garp.
“Names?”
“Laraby—”
“It’s protocol as decreed by King Larken himself. I’ll not be audited and thrown in jail because of familiarity.”
Garp went to open his mouth, but Grey spoke first. “Harmon and Garpland Whitesworth.”
“Departing location?”
“You and your questions are keeping me from a bottle,” said Garp.
“The township of Drip,” said Grey.
“Delivery and weight?” The scrollkeeper ushered his belly-grup forward by squeezing its sides with his legs. The great lizard groaned and scurried towards the back of the coach. Requiem tried to hide the girl behind him.
“Twenty garrups of tardine.”
The scrollkeeper scribbled on his ledger, looked up, and nearly fell from his saddle when he saw Requiem riding
near the load.
“Good morning, friend,” said Requiem.
“Who is this? He wasn’t named.”
“He’s just a passenger,” said Grey. “No dealings with stone.”
“It doesn’t matter. If he’s accompanying your load then he goes on the ledger—”
He leaned over the side of his mount and saw the girl.
“She okay?” said Laraby.
“She will be after we get to a Geomage,” said Requiem.
“What happened to her?” Laraby kept looking from Requiem back to the girl.
“Kissed by cultists.”
“Seriously?”
“Serious.”
“You her father?”
Requiem shook his head. “Just found her.”
“Just found her with cultists?”
Requiem nodded.
“Monnie!” shouted Laraby.
The bay door dropped just enough for one of the gate women to peek her head through. “Yep?”
“Didn’t someone come by asking about a girl not so long ago?”
“Yep,” said Monnie.
Requiem slipped off the coach. “Who? They still here?”
Monnie shrugged. “Couldn’t see his face. Came in the night. Had a funny voice. I said no and he just went off amongst the town. Thought nothing of it other than some drunk looking for a lass that slipped out of his clutches.”
“Didn’t see anything about him? Not even his clothes?”
“Wore a robe. That’s all I could see really.”
Requiem thought about the figure that had approached them on the road. Why didn’t he just yell out and wipe his hands clean of the girl? Because of the feeling you got, he told himself. A feeling that he had learned to listen to after years of facing the monsters that lurked across Moonsland.
“And his voice?”
“Had an accent. None I’d ever heard. High-pitched too. Like he’d just been kicked in the stones.”
Requiem scratched his chin and then turned to Garp and Grey. “You gonna be with this cart?”
“I ain’t leaving it,” said Grey. He nodded to Garp. “He will.”
“What? I have old friends to see.”
“Watch over her,” said Requiem.
“I’m no nanny,” said Grey.
“Consider her just another stone in your trunk,” said Requiem as he headed for the bay doors.
“Sir,” cried Laraby. “I need your name, sir. By order of the king.”
“Perry,” said Requiem. “Perry Winkle.”
The man looked at him crooked from atop his belly-grup, but when Requiem didn’t smile back, he wrote it down. Behind Laraby, Garp was laughing into his hands.
“And the girl?” called Laraby.
“Ask her.”
The man frowned, but returned to his ledger.
Requiem turned and left the Hive. Someone knew something in Pink and he was going to turn the place over to find out who.
Chapter 4
He returned to the Hive with nothing.
He’d gone to taverns, spoken with guards, knocked on the outside of holes to ask miners if they’d seen or heard anything.
But this woman Monnie seemed to be the only one who had any interaction with the robed, foreign-sounding man who’d been hit in the stones. And even she’d had nothing else to say when he pressed her for a second and third time.
If this man was looking for his daughter wouldn’t he have been shouting about it from atop a stool so that everyone knew to keep an eye out for her?
It didn’t add up, nor did it give Requiem any hope that he’d be rid of his problem about a hundred miles before he originally thought.
He asked around about a Geomage, to see if for some reason an edge city like Pink would have one. But the answer was no. So instead, he slunk back to the Hive, head hung low, defeated and annoyed.
He found Grey in the cockpit of the coach, reading some book titled The Abyss and Beyond. He was so engrossed that he didn’t notice Requiem as he approached.
“This where you’re gonna stay?”
The man blinked and then lowered the book. “Gonna be a fine evening. Who needs a roof when you got the stars sheltering your snores? Besides, best to save some weight.” He tapped his pockets.
“She didn’t wake, did she?”
“As asleep as a stone. Gave her some water. She’s gonna need a change eventually. She’s smelling done.”
“I ain’t her father.”
“She’s getting filthy. She’ll get sick.”
Requiem shrugged.
Grey shook his head and rubbed his beard. “Well, any luck finding someone who will?”
Requiem shook his head, frustrated. “Where’s Garp?”
“Fool’s over yonder, wasting his earnings despite my consistent advice.” He pointed down a nearby ally. At its end, a trove of people yipped and hollered as if there were some holiday worth celebrating that only they knew about.
“He get some low?” said Requiem.
“No doubt about it.” Grey returned to his reading.
“What’s it about?”
Grey looked up and saw Requiem looking at the book.
“What the title says.”
“Yeah? And who the hell knows what’s beyond the Abyss?”
“No one. It’s just theories gathered by some roamer with too much time on her hands, is all,” said Grey.
“Theories?”
“Guesses.”
“Heard those before.” Requiem’s hand went absentmindedly to the wounds on his neck, and he found scaly flesh forming over to make them scars, make them a part of who he was.
Grey looked up from his book to see him do it. “Those earned from saving the girl from the cultist?”
Requiem took his hand away and readjusted his hood. He nodded.
“Some price to pay for swinging a weapon.”
“I know it,” grumbled Requiem.
“Think I’d rather swing a pickaxe.”
“Didn’t know the price was so high when I laid a finger on the damned thing.”
“Really?”
“Really. All we ever heard were stories. Stories about miners finding a red stone in the tunnels, touching it, and powering up like a god on drugs. All it gave you was a few scratches. A few licks. A tiny weight to give to be recognized by the king. To become a hero. To get the hell out from under the black ceiling.” Requiem’s hand went to the hilt of Ruse. He still remembered Lang unearthing the stone. He still remembered the tinge of red just seen beneath the glow of the glimmer stone like a drop of blood leftover from a murder scene... “If I’d met a Scarred before then, maybe I wouldn’t have touched the thing in the first place.”
“Where’d you find it?” said Grey, looking on in interest, like Requiem was another book that needed studying.
“By the Abyss, why do you care?”
Grey looked back down to his book. “I don’t.”
Requiem sighed. He hadn’t had proper interactions with people in a while. Not like he had ever been good with them in the first place. He unsheathed Ruse, and the sound of it leaving its scabbard caused Grey to flinch and throw up his hands. “What are you doing? Put that away!”
Requiem tossed the blade into the cockpit, and the distance it was away from him made him squirm slightly.
Grey recoiled from it like it was a serpent about ready to strike. “Get that away from me.”
“If you’re so curious about how me and Ruse came to be then have a read.” He pointed to the etchings that ran over the flat of the blade, a short story hammered out into the dread metal. A story he had told many times before. A painful one. One he no longer wanted to recount.
Grey looked from the sword to Requiem and back. “Get it out of here. Now.”
“Suit yourself. Just thought you’d like another piece of fiction.” Requiem gathered the sword back from the cockpit.
“What do you mean?” said Grey, returning to his seat slowly as Requiem pulled the sword aw
ay completely.
“Never mind.” Requiem returned Ruse to its place in its sheath and started walking.
“Where are you going?”
“To see if your nephew will share.” He pointed towards the crowd at the end of the alley.
“You stay away from that boy with your demon stone.”
Requiem looked over his shoulder. “Or what?”
Grey just kept staring. “If I fall asleep there’ll not be an eye on your girl.”
“I won’t be long.”
Grey grunted and went back to his reading, his cheeks flushed with anger like a fruit too ripe on a vine, ready to burst.
The crowd was uproarious, tossing their arms into the air and yelling as if they were burning beneath an invisible fire. Requiem pushed his way to the center and found Garp among them, a bottle of low in one hand, a sack of coins in another, hysterically screaming into the human-made pit. At the pit’s center rose a bright blue stone, glowing like a forgotten piece of the morning sky as a bloody dusk settled in. Dancing around the stone, their oval eyes locked at one another as they snarled and spat, were two burrow-tails.
Normally peaceful creatures, the small, long-tailed beasts were often taken as pets. But when put in front of a shard of sapphire, they grew agitated. Enraged. Put two near one and you’d have yourself a vicious fight, one worth betting on. A sport outlawed by the Younger as soon as he won the Shamble, but one still actively alive in the outer regions of the east, or so at least the rumors went. Requiem hadn’t seen a bout in years, but he also hadn’t had a reason to go searching for one either.
But here one was, full and furious and barely hidden. Maybe because half the town was there and there weren’t many others they needed to hide from.
Either way, when Requiem saw the two creatures snarling and spitting, their tails slithering like serpents caught in a predator’s jaw, their coats stained in blood, he stopped where he stood.
There was Pop, or maybe it was Peep? Mote’s own pet, the rock rodent that would curl around his shoulders like a scarf day and night and stay there like Mote was a fleshy refuge that substituted for the rocky perches it normally called home. Mote loved that thing. Took it with him wherever he went. Held onto and spoke to it like a confidant, like a family member. Clutched to it even as the sickness slowly drew his strength and his life dwindled away. A better alternative to his father, who never knew what to say or how to listen, too busy out there trying to save the world and scrape enough coin together to pay for a cure...
