Bill could hear a scrabbling noise outside. Here they came. He watched as the door slowly began to swing open, squinting as half-light filled the little room. Well, he wasn’t going to give Humunculus any satisfaction and he certainly wasn’t going to make matters any easier for him or his hench-machines. He lay still, as if asleep.
“He is asleep,” hissed a voice by his ear.
“There is no time, kick him in knackers,” said another voice.
“But then he will shout and we will all be caught like mice in a net.”
“I like mice. Nice, best thing about his world,” returned the first voice.
Bill opened his eyes.
“Ah, mister Bill! It is I, Sebaceous!!”
The little lizard seemed to glow faintly in his excitement. Around him were gathered half a dozen other lizards, of various sizes, shapes and dress sense.
“I sorry for running away when big machines caught you. I fetch reinforcements. Now, we must be quick.”
Bill felt the ropes at his hands and feet fall away as they were gnawed through.
“Machines not up yet, we must run really fast,” Sebaceous said as Bill staggered to his feet.
The lizards pushed the door fully open and Sebaceous climbed up into his pocket. Stumbling as he moved out of the shed, Bill looked left and right before spotting a gap in the palisade. “Go there, friend Bill, we has made hole big enough for you. We thinks.”
Bill darted across to the wooden fence and, without hesitating, squeezed through the gap, pulled himself upright and sprinted to the hills. He’d just reached the cover of some bushes at the foot of the slope he’d earlier been spying from when a horn sounded. The hunt was up.
#
Brianna slipped through the streets of Montesham, passing from gaslight to gaslight as she made her way towards Harlot Street where, she understood, Velicity lived. Well, that was according to Mother Hemlock, and Brianna wasn’t entirely sure her mother had been serious. Surprisingly, Chortley had no better an idea of where his potential sweetheart lived, declaring that it had seemed ungentlemanly to ask. Or perhaps he was just chicken.
She was certainly nearing the part of Montesham she’d been directed to by the nice old boy she’d asked in the Cockle and Winkle, an inn she’d stopped at on the outskirts of the town. Mind you, he’d had a suspicious smirk on his face when she’d asked him where she could find Harlot Street. He declared that he hadn’t heard of it, but that if it were anywhere, it was to be found near the riverside docks that clustered around the river Montie as it oozed its way through the valley, dividing the town into two.
Specifically, it was likely to be in the area known as the Scarlet Tassle District. And so she found herself following her nose as she headed towards the river, dreading having to ask a passing sailor where she could find the STD. What was worse, she was clearly passing through an artistic neighbourhood, although, judging by the acrid smell overlaying the stink of the river, many of the artists here were of the piss variety.
Brianna paused beneath a gaslight, standing just outside its circle of illumination, and considering her next move. She gazed along the street, at the little islands of light that looked like stepping stones in the drizzle that had just started falling. She sighed. This was almost as stupid as their plan to use Bill’s fire magic as a way to get into the Great Library at Varma. She sighed again. She missed him, if only because if he were here, she’d have an outlet for her annoyance and sense of desperation. Not a thought process to be proud of. No, she missed him because he wasn’t here, that was the truth.
For lack of anything else to do, she examined the wall behind her. Printed flyers and more colourful posters had been slapped onto the crumbling bricks. They advertised everything from Amoratic Enhancers (either a love potion or an unfortunate misspelling) to opportunities not to be missed to earn gold from the comfort of your own home, passive income, own bed required. Yes, thought Brianna, I must be getting close to the STD. Her gaze swept onward and fell upon a brass plaque - or, at least, a plaque that had, at some point, been favoured with an atom-thin layer of brassy metal and which now looked more like a piece of pig iron left to go ginger in the rain. Underneath was a carefully placed colour poster of a young woman wearing little more than a couple of cones and a ridiculous hairpiece. Brianna tried to move her eyes beyond this tableau, which also involved a chariot and very excited horse, but she couldn’t do it. There was something horribly fascinating about it. And horribly familiar. She looked back at the plaque, squinting at the barely discernible letters engraved into the rusted metal.
Jock Vegetariano, painter of dreams. Very reasonable rates.
Someone had etched the word ‘wet’ before ‘dreams’. So, this was where Velicity had come to be transformed into the fantasy of adolescent men, to the considerable enrichment of much older, and considerably filthier, men. Maybe Vegetariano would know where to find his top model. It was, at least, a plan.
With considerable trepidation, Brianna tried the door handle but was unsurprised to find it locked. Fortunately (from a certain point of view), a drainpipe ran down the front of the building, so she grabbed its slippery surface and began to haul herself up.
She tried to stop herself from thinking about what it was her hands were gripping as she slid upwards propelled, in the main, by the force of her desperation. The first-floor window was now at eye level, but she needn’t have worried about being spotted as the glass was almost opaque with filth. Holding on to the grimy drainpipe with her left hand, she leant sideways and wiped away at the window with her elbow, then peered through the slightly transparent area she’d created. There was a light - not in the room with the window, but in the hallway or a chamber beyond.
Brianna pulled at the sash window but it didn’t budge - whether through neglect or because this was, after all, the artist’s quarter34 so security needed to be tight. The wise thing to do at this point would have been to get her knife from the lining of her boot and use it to gently lever out one of the panes - the leading looked rotten enough. But Brianna had had quite enough of wisdom for one lifetime, so she pulled her short sword from its scabbard and thrust the hilt into the window. And because Jackass, the god of fate, was on duty tonight and he liked nothing more than to have some excuse to stick two fingers up to Pompus the god of wisdom, the little pane, reinforced as it was by decades of filth, fell through the rotten leading onto the floor beyond soundlessly and in one piece.
Swinging backwards and forwards, Brianna built up enough momentum to heave her legs through the gap in the window. Her body followed with less panache and she ended up in a heap on the floor. No, not a floor, it was too soft for that. She forced herself to sit still and calm down so that her eyes could adjust to the darkness and then looked down and across. It was a bed. But not just any old, bog standard, sleeping place. This was a bed with the sort of pretensions that wouldn’t be out of place in the boudoir of a Brugundian king’s mistress. She ran her hands along the sheets, conscious that she was probably spreading gunk from the drainpipe all over them, enjoying the smooth luxury of silk. And then the thought came into her head that she’d never slept in a bed like this, never gathered up such soft sheets and lain on such downy pillows. And she’d certainly never worn anything like the silky garments she was now running through her fingers. No indeed; she was, after all, a farmer’s daughter. But she did, at least, now feel a bit better about the deposit her hands had left on the sheets - not the first they’d seen, she rather suspected.
With some regret, she swung her legs from the bed of sin and crept to the door. The light she’d seen from the window proved to be sitting on a table in the next room which appeared to be a lounge of some sort. Crouching as she went, Brianna flitted inside and peered around the corner of a sofa at the little figure sitting in front of a dead fire.
“I know you’re there,” he said, “but I’ve got nothing here you could want. I am but a poor artist.”
Brianna had neither the patience nor the i
nclination to hide any longer, so she got to her feet, stepped around the sofa and sat down on it, her sword across her knees. “Mr Vegetariano?”
“That’s me,” said the little figure, brightening a little “how did you know? Have you seen some of my work?”
“No, I read the sign outside.”
Vegetariano leaned forward, squinting at her. He was obviously of dwarfish stock, but had done his best to hide his heritage by replacing his beard with a goatee and the traditionally thick locks of his race with a manufactured comb-over.35 His bulbous nose sported a fashionable wart and he peered through a pair of pince-nez. The overall impression was one of a short-sighted dodo with alopecia.
“Well, whatever you’ve come for, I haven’t got it. Can’t even afford arms on my spectacles, I can’t.”
Brianna shrugged. “The famous Jock Vegetariano? Whose paintings adorn the walls of the uneducated classes? Isn’t there a ‘butler holding a mace’ in every home in Varma?” She wasn’t, by nature, a snob and still less an art critic, but, just occasionally, she unleashed her inner piss taker.
“Things have not gone well since the, err, change of administration,” the dwarf answered, his eyes narrowing. “You, um, don’t happen to be a representative of that august body do you?”
Brianna roared with laughter. “You must be kidding. If you’ll believe it, I spent last night with Robbing Hood!”
“I don’t believe it,” Vegetariano huffed.
“Well, you’ll certainly never imagine who is behind the mask of the legendary bandit,” Brianna said, meandering towards her point. The sofa was so comfortable and she was so exhausted that there seemed to be no hurry to finish the interview and go back out into the cold.
The dwarf leaned forward, his cunning face suddenly alive with interest. “You mean, you’ve had insider access? Sort of behind the scenes? I’d give one of my gold teeth for that,” he said, “so go on, tell me who this man of mystery is.”
“Probably the last person you’d guess,” Brianna said, smiling. “Who do you think would be stupid enough to become an outlaw in the Forest of Montesham under current circumstances?”
Vegetariano sat back. He produced a cigar out of apparently thin air and proceeded to thicken it considerably. “It must be an enemy of her ladyship,” he said, in between puffs. He was silent for a moment, then his face lit up. “Not her brother? Surely no-one is that foolish? And you spent the night with him?”
Brianna was nodding vigorously when a voice floated in through the door. “Oh did you indeed, Brianna Hemlock?”
Chapter 19
“THANK YOU, SEBACEOUS,” BILL SAID to the little lizard who sat in his cupped palms smiling up at him. “If I didn’t already feel obliged to help the draconi, I certainly do now.”
They had evaded the machines easily enough in the end since it appeared their pursuers had limited range and were not exactly manoeuvrable. It had also seemed to Bill, as he’d watched the search from the safety of a hilltop copse, that most of them weren’t really looking very hard.
By dusk, the machines had begun stomping back to the settlement to give the Faerie King the bad news. Sebaceous and the draconi had led him through a landscape they obviously knew well to a glade within a wood where sat Stingzlikeabee. It had become immediately apparent that they’d not sought her permission for the rescue and she was struggling to maintain her elf control.
So now they sat around a fire of Bill’s making, the entire draconi clan spread like a troop of meerkats with fur issues around the warmth. The elf squatted opposite him glowering.
“Friend Bill, you will now return to the village and destroy the machines so draconi can go back and rebuild their homes?”
Bill put Sebaceous on the ground in front of him. He’d been thinking about this all day once the danger of imminent capture had passed and he’d been dreading this moment. “No, I won’t destroy them Sebaceous.”
The lizard leapt to his feet, ran up Bill’s shirt and, leaning on his breastbone, looked the human in the eye. “What? We rescue you so you can give us back our homes and now you betrays us? We want justice, we want revenge.”
“But they’re not all bad. I was taken in by a family, two of them were obviously children inside their metal and wood bodies. Minus told me he’d used the souls of criminals to make his servants, but he lied. There are whole families in that settlement and it’s Humunculus that’s the problem, not them.”
Sebaceous stared into Bill’s eyes as he considered this at paleolithic speed.
“I knew he would betray you,” broke in the elf. “You are a fool Sebaceous. We must destroy them, they do not belong here, and if you won’t make him do it, I will!”
Stingzlikeabee leapt to her feet and launched herself at Bill, sweeping the lizard from his chest as she did so. Bill screamed as she sunk her pointed teeth into his shoulder, and, in his desperation and pain, he knocked her aside, then rolled away. She jumped onto his back and he felt the pin-sharp ends of her fangs in his neck. And then she was gone, submerged under a mass of draconi.
Bill could see her clawed hands grabbing at lizards and throwing them off her, but, each time, the little creature would pull itself out of wherever it had landed and jump back into the battle.
“Stop!” Bill shouted, horrified.
The mass of anger and pointy things continued to seethe. Then a hand flung out, a lizard rocketed sideways, hit a tree and did not get up.
“STOP!” Bill cried, pulling heat into his arms and throwing a fireball to land just beside the elf’s head. The mass froze as Bill moved across to where the draconi lay, unmoving. He picked up the little figure which was dressed in a pink hat and skirt. Its eyes were shut and he could detect no breathing.
“Do you see what he has done?” snarled the elf. “This is his fault. Never has there been any dispute between elfs and draconi. Never till now. And this is the result.”
Sebaceous extracted himself from the heap, climbed up Bill’s arm and looked at the prone figure. “Nessie?” he said, in a voice full of fear and sadness. “Is you alive?” He touched her scaly skin. “She is cold, even for draconi.”
With infinite care, Bill warmed his hands a little and cupped Nessie within them. He felt as though he ought to breath on her too, but that struck him as having pretentions of godhood, so he gently warmed the lizard and hoped for the best.
After a few silent moments, Bill opened his hands. Sebaceous craned his head around Bill’s thumb and put his ear hole against Nessie’s chest. “She breathes,” he said. “She breathes!!! My daughter, she breathes!!”
Sebaceous jumped down to the ground and began dancing around as the draconi switched in a few moments from fighting machines to revellers. Bill carefully put Nessie down on the ground where she was instantly surrounded by draconi, some of them being pushed angrily away by a matronly lizard Bill imagined to be Sebaceous’s wife. “Thank you,” she said, “you are a warm giver and healer and the draconi will follow.”
Bill’s relief was tempered by guilt - after all they’d been fighting over him in the first place. Now to deal with the elf. He looked to where Stingzlikeabee had been lying. She had disappeared.
“We is elf-less,” said Sebaceous.
#
The next morning, Bill peered through the grass, his belly wet with dew. He was lying on top of the hill from which he’d first spied on the settlement, his eyes tired and dry from a restless night. The air smelled clean and fresh with only the merest hint of machine oil.
He had painted himself into a corner - it would have been far simpler to see all the machine men as enemies so that his only problem then was to find a way to destroy them. After all, he’d seen the destruction they’d caused to Sebaceous’s family warren and their effect on the landscape was obvious. They were a threat even before he knew they were led by Humunculus. Now, they were a calamity waiting to happen.
“There is other homes,” Sebaceous had said, “the wooden box people have destroyed. They seek us out
and kill all they can find. It was harder than hard to get my draconi to follow me into their town to rescue you, but soon there will be no draconi here. No elfs too - they has no way to fight these metal people.”
“Would fewer elfs be such a bad thing?” Bill replied.
Sebaceous had stared at Bill, eyes wide. “No no no! Elfs like our mistress, they are mean cos they have to be mean. They have travelled into the world of the goblins and the world of humans - they does not come back if they is nice little elfs. But what you call Beyond is our Gaia, elfs make it, just as humans make the Brightworld. Others there are; draconi, dwarfs, dragons, but Gaia is for the elfs. It is their world and so we follows them.”
Bill had apologised, he knew he had no right to judge a whole race by one member. Pick the wrong human, after all, and you could come to a seriously misguided opinion. Particularly if that human was a politician.36
“What I don’t understand,” Bill said after his grovelling, “is how a tiny settlement like this could possibly affect the whole of Beyond? Surely this world is the same size as ours?”
Sebaceous had fixed Bill with an appraising expression. “Friend Bill, what would happen if I poked your eyeballs out?”
“I’d go blind,” Bill responded, puzzled.
Crossing his arms, Sebaceous stared up at Bill and said nothing, like a professor waiting for a particularly slow pupil to catch up. Albeit a six inch high professor with scaly skin and a bowler hat set at a jaunty angle on his head.
Bill thought for a moment. “So what you’re saying is that small parts of a body can have a big effect?”
Sebaceous nodded, and waited.
“And these machines could damage something small but important? The equivalent of eyes. Is that it?”
“You are getting point, friend Bill.”
“But what is there around here that is so important?”
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