Livid Steel

by Jordan Baugher

  Chapter 6

 

  Still in his drowsy daze, Novanostrum awakens with a start to the sound of voices outside the doorway leading into the room containing his cell.

  “You were supposed to put them to sleep with your music, what the hell happened?”

  “I don’t know, I just lost my ear for the notes somehow. I feel like my musical touch was sapped right out of me.”

  “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter. They won’t be fighting anyone for a while.”

  Novanostrum stands as Zanther and Varello walk up to his cell.

  “Took you guys long enough. What do you plan to do about these iron bars?”

  “Don’t worry,” Zanther says, “Varello brought the key. Stand back.”

  Varello unslings the powderblast strapped to his back and points it at the lock as Novanostrum crouches in the corner. There’s a deafening mini-explosion, with dust falling from the ceiling. What’s left of the iron door frame falls to the ground.

  The three of them walk through the hallway, stepping over incapacitated guards and into the predawn winterland of a tranquil Zweissergrund.

  “The town garrison will put up a pretty good chase when they realize I’m gone,” Novanostrum observes.

  “They’d better have some fast horses if they expect to catch us,” Zanther says, pointing at the skyyacht sitting nonchalantly in the town square.

 

  Madra sleeps fitfully, dreaming of invasions and assassinations and traitorous nobles. She awakens with a start, springing out of bed with two knives drawn. Nobody else is in her bedchamber. She looks in her closets and under her bed, finding nothing.

  “Perhaps I should go out for a drink to ease my nerves,” she says to herself.

 

  Back in the air, Novanostrum, Zanther, and Varello are making their way back to Claustria. Novanostrum packs his longpipe with smokeweed and prepares to light it with a flint. Varello hops across the deck and slaps it out of his hand.

  “Are you mad, man? Look above you,” he says, pointing at the giant balloon overhead filled with dragon flatuses, “one stray spark could start a fireworks show for the entirety of the Centerlands.”

  “Oh...right. I forgot.”

  Zanther turns the wheel a few degrees, adjusting their course. He narrows his eyes at Novanostrum. “Any idea why Arcania is delivering death to every ruler on the continent?”

  Novanostrum frowns. “I honestly have no idea. It’s something I wouldn’t have put past Rassamander, but with him gone I wouldn’t expect the rest of the Wizard’s Council to do something so brazenly suicidal. From what I’ve heard since being locked up, almost every nation in Upper Kleighton is in the process of declaring war on Arcania. The guards taunted me daily by telling me of the imminent destruction of my so-called homeland, as if I cared.”

  “You don’t?” Varello asks.

  “Let’s just say that when I left there six sunspins ago, I wasn’t very well-liked. I believe at one point my head was worth fifty or sixty grossgoats.”

  Zanther raises an eyebrow. “What did you do?”

  “In my capacity as a researcher for the Magickal Artifacts Department, I was exploring one of the sub-basements of the Knot and I stumbled into something I shouldn’t have. The Wizard’s Council considered this a treasonous act and sentenced me to death, but my father was able to talk them into banishing me instead, with a bounty on my life should I ever return.”

  “Where did you go after that?” Zanther asks.

  “Rhea.”

  “Never heard of it,” Zanther says.

  Novanostrum points at the horizon, at one of the half-illuminated moons, and Zanther and Varello exchange a look of surprise.

  “Oh...that Rhea?” Zanther asks.

  Novanostrum nods. “Though my father got them to agree to banishing me, he never specified where I would be banished to, assuming anywhere outside Arcania would suffice. Rassamander amended the deal a little, and the entire Council focused their power and opened a portal to Rhea, unkindly granting me immortality before sending me through.”

  “What could be unkind about that?” Zanther asks.

  “Rhea is a frigid wasteland with no oxygen, no life, and no water. When it is illuminated by the sun, it is hotter than the hottest desert. Every eyeblink spent there brings incomprehensible pain. I wandered the surface for six days and six nights, freezing and burning and choking and thirsting and starving. Eventually, I just gave up. I curled myself up in a little ball and prayed for death. But it didn’t come. Next thing I know, a portal opens up and an Astromagus grabs me and carries me through, back to this sphere, to somewhere in the mountains. My father was there. The two of them watched over me for a few weeks while I recovered from that horrific ordeal, and then one day the Astromagus cast a spell where he took my immortality, in exchange for saving me. After my father saw that I was okay, he gave me this watch and returned to Arcania. What I didn’t know was that he was planning to kill Rassamander and the rest of the council for what I went through. Of course, as a Fifth Circle, he didn’t really stand a chance...”

  Novanostrum leans over the railing, gazing at Rhea.

 

  At first glance, she looks like just another trashy milkmaid. Sitting at the table on the arm of one of the dirtiest, toughest looking men, she appears to be nothing more than a common whore. Underneath the revealing leather bustier and the gobs of eyeshadow, though, there is just a hint of nobility which nobody at the table notices.

  “So let’s go over the plan again,” says the man with the noble whore at his arm.

  “The moneyman says it’s like this: we storm the palace at four bells. Six of us, led by Jenko, will attack the main gate, forming a diversion. The rest of us, led by yours truly, will enter the castle through the river entrance, which will put us right in the core, just doors away from the Queen and her commanders. Wearing the uniforms we got last week, we’ll stealth-kill our way into the Queen’s chambers.”

  “And then?” the noble whore asks.

  “I don’t recall giving you permission to speak, wench. Leo, teach her some manners.”

  Leo glances at his leader’s scowl, then at the girl. He smacks her face with the back of his hand.

  “She’s got a point, though,” one of the other men chimes in, “what will we do after that? We won’t be able to hold off a castle full of soldiers for long.”

  Jenko, the leader, gives a laugh. “We won’t hold them off at all, once we’ve got the prize we’ll lickety-split the way we came and take her back to the moneyman.”

  “Just who is the ‘moneyman’ financing this little charade?” asks another.

  “Never you mind about that. He’s what you’d call an ‘interested party’ and he’s got enough coin to keep us all up to our elbows in tits and ale for quite some time--if we can keep our heads together until this job is finished.”

  “Where’s our rendezvous with this so-called ‘moneyman’ supposed to occur?” Leo asks.

  Jenko gives Leo a serious look. “You remember where you did your first dirtdabble? That’s where we’re meeting the moneyman.”

 

  Zanther, Novanostrum, and Varello are sitting on the deck of the skyyacht, watching the tranquil Flatplains below them glow in the twilight rays of the setting sun. Zanther is the first to break the melancholy silence.

  “So, Nove, since you didn’t magick your way out of that cell, I’m guessing you’re a little impotent these days.”

  “Very astute.”

  “I’ve developed kind of a similar problem,” Zanther continues.

  “I’m really not the one you should be talking to about that.”

  “No, not like that...that’s not what I mean at all. I mean, in terms of that, I’m still probably twice the man you are, but I digress. No, you see this wooden longknife?”

  “You couldn’t afford a real one?”

  “That’s not quite it. I woke up a few days ago, and the touch of metal, a
ny metal, burns me like a hot poker. Even if I wear gloves. But that’s not the weirdest thing...the weirdest thing is that it all started after I had a dream about Risma.”

  “Really?” Novanostrum asks, “The night before I lost my magick, I had a kind of...similar experience.”

  Varello, who had only been half-listening before, perks up at the mention of the name. “Who is Risma?”

  “She’s the girl who was in that burning house in the Mucklands, the one you ‘died’ trying to save,” Zanther explains, “and I think she’s a sorceress.”

  Varello pulls a scrap of paper from his pocket and hands it to Novanostrum, who reads it and passes it to Zanther.

  “Yes, it’s a very clever poem. In fact, I wrote a poem last night while I was navigating. Would you like to hear it?”

  “The goddess Prismarissa?” Novanostrum asks, “Zanther, I don’t think Risma’s a sorceress at all.”

  “Hmm. Well, putting aside the loss of our respective talents for a moment,” Varello continues, “the main danger that the prophecy warns of is what should happen if this goddess gets impregnated. Neither of you, uh, ‘knew’ her in the intimate sense of the word, did you?”

  “No,” Zanther says, “I only saw her in a dream and all she did was kiss me.”

  “Yes, well, that’s a relief. And you, Master Singularis?”

  Novanostrum turns a little green and gives a silent shrug of his shoulders.

  “Nove?” Zanther asks.

  “Hey,” Novanostrum says, “most of a wizard’s life is spent in solitude, in quiet reflection. Should a beautiful woman happen to wander into your secluded mountain cave, you don’t shoot her full of lightning.”

  “But you did shoot her full of something, eh?” Zanther says as he gives Novanostrum’s shoulder a playful punch.

  Varello slaps his palm to his forehead and sighs.