River of Thieves

by Clayton Snyder

  We stopped in the street, and I looked at the Rek. "Go on. Get the boat ready. I think we need to walk around for a while."

  Cord nodded, and Rek left, making his way down the street. When he'd turned a corner, I took Cord to the side.

  "Does this city have any parks?"

  He blinked. "Odd time to sightsee."

  "Sure. I like flowers."

  "Huh."

  "What?"

  "I had always pegged you as more of a burnt-out brewery type of person."

  We'd started walking again, and I slugged him in the shoulder. "I like pretty things."

  "Mmm," he said.

  We walked the streets for a while, passing tall lamps on poles, yellow stones inside glowing gently. A soft mist sprung up, bringing the scents of pine and the ocean in a mixture that cleansed the smells of blood and shit from my nose.

  A figure approached through the mist, staggering slightly, the lute in his hand clutched by its neck. His red hair shone in the light of the streetlamps, and as he drew close, a grin plastered itself across his face. I groaned.

  "Ah, milady!" he called, hurrying over to us. "I had hoped to meet you here."

  "Don't you have a sorority to raid somewhere?" Cord asked.

  "Another snipe like that, and I'll show you my fearsome skill," the youth bragged.

  "Is that your skill with your left or right hand? Surely you don't use both. I don't believe your weapon is large enough," Cord replied.

  "Silence, cad! I have bested knaves twice your size and thrice your wit," the young man said.

  He lifted one hand, the palm flattened, and chopped the edge into Cord's neck. Cord blinked and looked at me. I shrugged, and he turned back to the redhead, slamming his fist into the kid's nose. The youth staggered back, a fountain of red spraying from his hands, his lute forgotten on the ground as he attempted to staunch the flow of blood.

  "My face! Alas, my visage shattered!"

  Lute abandoned, the boy began to weep, fleeing for the quay. We watched as he climbed the stones, standing over the sea as it crashed around him.

  "My heart is struck in twain! Dehna!" he shouted before jumping from the wall and disappearing.

  "Holy shit," I said. "That was dramatic."

  "It's fine. There's a beach on the other side. When he sobers up, he'll be back to annoying everyone in a fifty-mile radius," Cord said.

  We turned another corner, and found ourselves in a small wooded area in the center of the city, neat grasses and carefully cultivated flowers planted at the borders. The mist and the late hour cleared the visitors out, and we found a bench under the spreading branches of a sturdy oak.

  "Okay," I said. "Talk."

  He shrugged. "I hate the way the world chews people up. I hate the way the rich, the powerful rape and take and nothing ever happens to them."

  I shook my head. "It's more than that. You've been... different since Midian."

  He laughed. "Yeah. Wow. That got out of control. Wraiths, who woulda thought?"

  "You said that."

  He fell quiet, looked off into the trees. When he finally spoke, it was subdued.

  "I feel like I'm tumbling from thing to thing, and just barely fucking holding on to a thread that keeps slipping through my hands. When I do manage to grasp it, it moves so fast it cuts and bleeds."

  He looked up to the black spire towering over the city. "You know what that is?"

  "Mage tower?" I guessed.

  He shook his head. "Prison. I spent four years there. It's a rough place. Gangs, lunatics, rogue wizards, fuck knows what else. They put the worst up top. That way, if they think of escaping, they have to work their way down or jump. No one's tried either, yet."

  "Anyway, I saw the worst of humanity in there. Inmates and guards. I saw men bleed out over simple things—an apple at lunch, the wrong word spoken. I saw guards beat a man so badly he'd never walk again. I saw a lot of injustice, too. People in for simple offences beside murderers. Men who couldn't afford to pay whatever tax the local lord came up with that week."

  "In there, you have two choices, Nenn. You either live like an animal—you just survive, moving by basic instinct—or you find that spark of humanity they've tried to take away, and you nurture it. You make yourself better. Because the people that put you in there don't care if you ever are. They just care that you're no longer their problem."

  I let him talk for a while, then we fell into another silence.

  "So, this Rook. What does he want?"

  "An artifact. Once upon a time, we'd explored the Hills, and we found a ruin. And in the ruin, something we felt was better kept there."

  "Which was?"

  "Camor's eye."

  "Wait, you found the eye of a god, and you just left it there?"

  "It was really icky."

  "You declined godlike power for 'icky'?"

  "Hey, it's also a lot of responsibility."

  I looked at him for a long moment. "Good point. Okay, well, we have to be responsible now."

  "Then can we burn this fucking city down?"

  "Sure. I'll even buy you a cake after."

  ***

  We climbed aboard the Codfather. Rek watched us board, and inclined his head.

  "Good talk?"

  "Good enough," I said.

  Cord went below deck to get some rest, and I took the bench behind Rek as we pulled from the lagoon and swung east.

  "Six days, huh?" Rek asked.

  "Yeah."

  "Gonna have to use the engine, aren't we?"

  "Yeah."

  "That'll suck."

  I lit a cigar, blew a plume of smoke, and watched his cats play. "Fuck yeah."

  As Fun As A Genital Papercut

  A few hours later, I crawled up from my cabin into the bright moonlight. Rek had retired, and Cord stood at the wheel. For a while, I stood on the deck and listened to the wind snap the sails, the water rush against the hull. Finally, Cord called to me.

  "Nenn."

  I climbed the stairs to the quarterdeck, and took the bench behind him. Rek's cats disappeared, presumably making their way below deck to toy with mice, curl up in cabins, and generally be a nuisance, albeit out of the way.

  "When are we starting the engine?" I asked. I knew it had to be soon.

  Cord looked up at the moon. "First light. As soon as Rek's ready to navigate. Even I'm not comfortable slipping into the deadlands in the dark."

  We sat in silence until light flooded the east. I played with my knives, spinning and sharpening, until Rek stomped from below deck, followed by a small herd of cats. He yawned and stretched, then unpacked a small meal for us on the bench—hard biscuits, dried fish, a pungent cheese, and skins of mild wine that helped kick the senses a little alive. We ate for a while in silence, and when we finished, Cord and I smoked while Rek took the wheel.

  "If we're gonna do this, let's get it over with," Rek said.

  Cord shrugged and motioned for me to follow. We descended to the cargo hold, stepping lightly around barrels of supplies and random loot we'd amassed. The engine sat at the far end, as horrific as ever.

  Scratch that. I as I drew closer, I saw Lux had been busy. The engine still held a beating heart at its center, but arrayed around it in glass jars connected by what looked like thick veins were more hearts, at least twenty in all. I pointed at them.

  "Do I want to know where you got all of these?"

  "Probably not."

  "I don't suppose they were donated."

  "Let's just say the owners weren't using them anymore."

  I noticed another change—a lever set just a foot or two in front of the machine.

  "Now this, this is good," I said. "Don't need a wizard to unfuck this thing."

  "You'd hope," Cord said, and before I could respond, threw the switch.

  The rings on the engine spun, and the hearts beat in time, suddenly loud as hooves on stone. The world went gray, the sides of the boat becoming transparent. Colors began to bleed and stream around
us, and the world elongated.

  "Coooooooord," I said, my words strung out. "Whaaaaaat the fuuuuuuuuck?"

  "Luuuuuuux caaaaaalled iiiiiiiiit tuuuuuuuuuurbo."

  Strains of haunting music played from somewhere unseen, and outside, scenes from worlds I couldn't begin to recognize. I moved my hand, and the image blurred, stretched in front of my eyes, and then snapped back to itself. I giggled involuntarily. At least until Cord started singing.

  "Neath the eaves

  Black as night

  Slips the shadow

  Of the wight

  On its shoulder

  Raven black

  On its skull

  Eye of black

  Red of tooth

  Long of claw

  The fox god

  Watches all"

  By the end, he was screaming the verse, and I clapped my hands over my ears. Above, Rek howled at the wheel as the world came undone. Cord screamed and wrenched on the lever, and the world suddenly stopped, slamming into quiet focus with the force of a hammer blow to the skull. We collapsed, and for a time, lay on the boards of the hull, stunned. Finally, I stood, and helped Cord up.

  "That woman is a genius," Cord said. "Bent, but a genius!"

  "When we get back, if Rook hasn't killed Lux, remind me to," I said.

  We climbed above deck. Rek greeted us with a wide-eyed stare and a nod. Had he any hair, it would have been standing on end. He just blinked, walked calmly to the rail, and vomited his entire breakfast. When he was done, he took the wheel and steered us as close to shore as he could. A series of hills rose to the south.

  "Nice job," Cord said, and clapped Rek on the back.

  The big man swiveled his head and fired a stream of puke onto Cord. He coughed once, and grinned.

  "Thanks."

  In Which I Make Fun of Idiots

  We'd been fortunate. Just a mile down the shore, masts and hulls clotted the river, the exodus from Midian brought to a halt by the sudden onset of cold and a narrowing of the banks. The air took on a chill since our own flight, and as we disembarked, we kept watch for signs of wraiths.

  It was a four-hour hike to the ruins where Cord had found the eye. We fell into a companionable silence for most of it, content to walk in one another’s company without the need to fill it with nonsense. I suppose that was the way with friends. You grew comfortable enough with one another to not feel the need to fill the dull moments with useless speech.

  A wind kicked up, and an eerie howl echoed through the landscape, like a pack of lost wolves. The hair on the back of my neck rose, and I tensed.

  “What the fuck was that?” I asked.

  “The hills,” Rek said.

  We crested a rise, and I saw the reason for the sound. Holes riddled each hole, and as the wind blew, it kicked up the moaning, like an oboe gone wrong.

  “Holy shit. I thought it was ghosts.” I said.

  Cord laughed. “There’s no such thing.”

  I paused and grabbed him by the arm. “Hold the fuck up.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t believe. In ghosts.”

  Cord shrugged. “Ever seen one?”

  I frowned. “No, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. What about goblins? I’ve never seen a goblin, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

  “She’s got a point,” Rek said.

  “Oh yeah?” Cord said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  He pointed toward an object nearby. “Then what’s that?”

  I turned and looked. It was a squat humanoid with green warty skin, a crooked hooked nose and large yellow eyes. It watched us while clutching a short spear in one hand. It wore brown rags and oversized shoes.

  “A goblin?”

  “Right. They exist.”

  I opened my mouth to argue further with him, when the goblin called out in a crackling voice. “Bro!”

  “Ah shit,” Rek said.

  “What?”

  “You’ll see,” Cord said.

  The goblin approached, spear held out cautiously, until it was only a few feet away.

  “Bro?”

  “Why’s it keep saying that?” I asked.

  “Well actually,” it said.

  “Kill it now,” Rek said.

  The goblin frowned and took an aggressive stance, steadily advancing with its spear. I backed up a step.

  “Well actually, bro,” it said, speech becoming agitated. “Bro, actually. Well, bro.”

  “Eek!” I said, and flung a knife at it.

  The blade flipped once and embedded in the goblin’s skull, sinking to the hilt. The goblin dropped, and I pulled the knife free, wiping bits of blood and a shockingly small amount of gray matter on its robes.

  “Their heads are surprisingly soft,” I noted.

  Rek nodded, trying to speak over Cord’s laughter. “Wel’ctually goblins. The most annoying tribe the gods ever dropped onto the Veldt.”

  I put the blade away, and we advanced up another hill. In the valley below, a large group of the goblins gathered, and we heard their annoying speech as a jumbled mess from our vantage point. Cord pointed just past them.

  “Ruin’s there.”

  I saw a small temple, four decaying walls, and a collapsed roof. It didn’t look like much. He pointed again, and I followed the new line he’d traced out.

  “But it looks like they did our work for us.”

  A totem stood in the middle of the goblin swarm, a tall brown thing in the approximation of a man. Its face was nondescript, though where one eye should have been carved, a wet glistening orb stood out. Even from this distance, we could smell what they’d made it from.

  “What’s the plan?” I asked.

  “No plan,” Cord said.

  “Yep, no plan. Goblins suck,” Rek replied, unlimbering the axe from his back.

  “Fuck,” I breathed, and pulled two of my longer blades out.

  Without waiting, Rek leapt from the crown of the hill. For a moment, he hung in the air, like a thrown brick, then like a thrown brick, fell among the goblins. His axe rose and fell in workmanlike strokes and goblin screams filled the air.

  “ACTUALLY!” they yelled as one, and charged him.

  I slipped down the hill while they were distracted by the big man dicing them up like particularly aggressive vegetables. I reached the back of the line and began to cut my way forward, blades ripping open kidney and spine, skull and groin. They fell like wheat before a scythe, and in a matter of minutes, any remaining were groaning on the ground, or fleeing for the relative safety of anywhere but here. Rek wiped the gore from his face and shook his axe clean.

  “Okay, Nenn,” he said. “Grab the eye.”

  I gave him a look with one eye squinted, and reached into the dung heap, pulling the orb free with a squelch. It was warm, and I had the distinct feeling it was trying to see me. I hurried back to Cord, Rek in tow, and tossed it to him. He caught it easily, and washed it off with his waterskin. He inspected it for a long minute, then held it up to his own.

  “I have an idea,” he said.

  “This sounds like a terrible idea,” I replied.

  “You haven’t even heard it yet.”

  “No, she’s right. This is a terrible idea,” Rek agreed.

  “Fine,” Cord sighed.

  He lowered the eye, then with a quick motion, ripped his own out. His scream echoed across the hills, putting even the low moaning to shame. Before he could collapse, he shoved Camor’s eye into the now-empty socket. The optic nerve squirmed and twitched, then sucked the dangling orb into his skull.

  “HOLY SHIT,” I said. “You fucking lunatic.”

  Rek coughed once, a hard, wet sound. “Bleurgh,” he agreed.

  “Okay. Okay, that wasn’t my best idea,” Cord said.

  “How does it feel?”

  “Got a hell of a headache.”

  “Yeah, but any godly stuff going on?”

  Cord shrugged. He pointed at a goblin’s body. “RISE,
” he commanded.

  A low ripping sound came from the corpse, followed seconds later by a horrid stink. Cord coughed and waved it away.

  “Nope.”

  I shook my head. “Let’s get back to the boat, before you conjure something more disgusting.”

  ***

  We'd just cleared the hollow hills when the first of the wights crested behind us. They were preceded by their own wave of sound, setting the hair on the back of our necks on end and gooseflesh rippling. Rek looked behind us, and broke into a trot.

  "Where's he going?" Cord asked.

  I glanced back and joined Rek. "Wights," I shot over my shoulder.

  "Whites?" Cord glanced back. "Oh."

  He broke into a run as well, though trailing a little.

  "Slow down," he panted.

  "So they can kill us all at once?" Rek asked.

  "Just enough to distract them."

  I flipped him the bird and put on speed, pulling ahead of the two of them. I glanced back and saw the first row of wights gained ground, long alabaster limbs thrashing in their effort to catch us. Black eyes gleamed in the sun.

  "If that eye can do something, maybe make it do it now," I shouted.

  Cord puffed a curse and spun. He planted himself in the path of the wraiths, and stuck out his chest.

  "Fuck off, the lot of ya!" he shouted.

  They gained ground, and he blanched. Rek and I paused, Rek unlimbering his axe.

  "Ohfuckohfuckohfuck," Cord spat. "Thinkthinkthinkthink."

  "Cord!" I shouted.

  The wights gained ground yet again, the closest within arm's reach. It drew back a claw to swipe at the stocky thief when he pointed.

  "LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU," he bellowed.

  A roar sounded from the hills, and the wights turned as one. Something--something enormous and prehistoric in its size rose from the crest of the hill, jaws open and slavering. Ivory teeth the length of a man's arm jutted in savage rows in its mouth. Above that, a snub nose and yellow eyes and a crest of spines running down its massive body. It screeched, shattering the relative quiet of the hills, and unfolded massive membranous wings.