Threadbare Volume 2

by Andrew Seiple

  “They might be slow, yes,” Cecelia spoke as the armor clanked on with endless patience, “but I’ve got a friend, and she’s quick as death. That’s the name for it, right?”

  “Fast as Death,” spoke a voice behind the Baron and he jumped, whirled to see Kayin behind him, a pair of knives in her hands and a mad grin on her face. “Got you, fat boy.”

  “What? How... I saw you leave!”

  “Yeah. And you didn’t see me sneak back after we beat the shit out of your huntsman. He spilled your plans. He was really eager to cooperate after Cecelia animated his pants and started up the nutcracker special.”

  Feet upstairs, thumping on the door. A distant groaning, that he knew from experience in his younger adventuring days. Zombies.

  “You’ve met our assassin. She’s the least of your worries. Before he was a knight, Graves was a necromancer,” Cecelia continued. “If you don’t surrender we’ll kill you, he’ll tuck your soul into something horrible, and you’ll be trapped in a rotting shell forever.”

  “Animator, Necromancer, Assassin... Who the hell are you people?” Colm shrieked. “Next you’ll be telling me that dopey-looking youth with you was a goddamn Model!”

  “No, he’s just a knight. Twenty-five levels worth,” Cecelia said. “Unfortunately for your bandits.”

  The Baron’s mouth shut. He hastily reassessed the odds.

  “I surrender.”

  “Good man,” said Cecelia. “Now let’s talk about food again...”

  *****

  Sergeant Tane blinked, as he watched the four wagons roll in from the south. Yoked to the fattest oxen he’d ever seen, each one of them was laden to the brim with bags, and each one had a grinning Knight sitting on the buckboard, guiding them in.

  “You’re late,” he said, glancing up to the darkening sky... then down to the bound, fat figure in the last wagon. “Who the fuck is that?”

  “The former Baron of Pads,” Cecelia said. “Guilty by his own admission, and his own records, of theft, treason against the crown, and preying upon the weak. His own people told me everything. Ah, they’ve got an alderman now, until the Crown can appoint someone new out there.”

  “Might take a while.” Tane said. “He confessed willingly?”

  “Yes, after he tried to kill us.”

  “Oh. Well that’s simple, then.” He nodded to Renick. “Take Lana and go execute this son of a bitch. Behind the latrines, I’m thinking.”

  “Yes sir.” Renick nodded to Lana, and the two moved forward.

  Tane watched Cecelia’s face turn pale, as the man shrieked and screamed behind her. “Wait, what? We don’t have the authority to do that!”

  “We’re a military convoy to the front,” Tane explained. “We can’t spare the guards to bring this man back to Castle Cylvania for a trial, and I don’t see any witnesses, which means you can’t go back to profess his guilt. I’m not going to feed a traitor food we can take to the front instead. So he dies.”

  Cecelia looked back to her companions. Kayin shook her head. “He tried to kill us, Cecelia.”

  Graves nodded to support Kayin. “He’s horrible. Coming from me, that means a lot, right?”

  But it was Morris who seemed to shake her the most. “Yeah, it’s not exactly in accordance with the old laws, but... we’ve got field authority, right? And our Code of Chivalry doesn’t say we have to follow the laws, just the King and the Crown. So it’s okay if we do this.”

  “We...” Cecelia licked her lips. “We should follow the laws, too.” She whispered, as Renick and Lana hauled the shrieking Baron away, avoiding her eyes. “If we don’t, who will?”

  “He got stupid and he got caught,” Tane shrugged. “If it wasn’t us, then someone else would have got him anyway. Really, he brought this on himself. And that’s the end of it, Dame Ragandor.”

  She watched him go, watched them drag him off into the treeline, and only closed her eyes as the fat man’s screams rose up, then fell silent.

  When she looked back, Tane was next to her, lips set in a sad smile. “Come on then,” he murmured, hopping up next to her and taking the reigns. “You did good. Don’t let that trouble you.”

  “He was supposed to get a trial,” Cecelia said. “He should have gotten a trial.”

  “He did, more or less. He had it when he tried to kill you and failed. The truth of it...” Tane said, looking away. “The truth of it is that things are messy right now. Chaos everywhere, rebels and traitors all around us. They know the law. They try to use it against us. The King’s way is a hard way, but it’s the only way to us. And if you don’t like it, milady, then you’re welcome to return your armor. And go back to the castle, while we sort it out.”

  Cecelia took a deep breath. She raised her gauntlet to her face, and stared at it. Then closed it into a fist. “No. I did something today. Something good. That village is better off in charge of themselves. And I’m not going to run out on my friends. I can help them. I can help everyone.”

  Tane nodded. “Good. Then I’ve got news for you. Messenger imp came by today, checking on us. Your Steam Knight suit’s arrived at Fort Bronze.”

  “That’s the last stop before the front, right?”

  “Yeah. We’ll drop the food off there. Then it’s into action. But not against the dwarves.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “I’ll tell the others when we’re together, but I might as well tell you now. There’s been a rebel uprising, just southeast of the Fort, in another shitty frontier village. Some little fishing town called Outsmouth...”

  CHAPTER 9: MEDIOCRE OLD ONES

  The wagon rolled down the overgrown road, lurching and hobbling as the wooden cats pulling it slunk along, tails bobbing in time with their gait. Bright patches of colored cloth on the wagon’s cloth covering spelled out big words, that read, simply,

  ANNIE MATA’S TRAVELLING TOY CIRCUS

  The toys rode in the front, the cats slept in the back, and Threadbare put his tools away after he finally, finally finished the last part of the dummy’s mouth.

  Your Tailoring Skill is now level 45!

  You are now a level 10 tailor!

  DEX+1

  PER+1

  He nodded, then arranged the robes and hood and veil carefully over the reclining form, until nothing could be seen of its face. Thick gloves already covered her hands. You could tell there was a human shape underneath there, but that was about it, really.

  At least, that’s what Zuula and Garon and Madeline had said, instructing Fluffbear to carve the wooden parts, and Threadbare on how best to pad them.

  It had been a bit of a rush job, regardless. After they’d all agreed to the plan, Zuula had put him through the rigorous training necessary to make it work. And now here he was, five animator levels later, ready to give it a whirl.

  Threadbare tapped on the cloth partition between the front and the back of the wagon. Next to him, Pulsivar opened an irritated eye. Seriously, why was it so hard for the little bear to understand the concept of naptime?

  “I think we’re ready,” Threadbare said. “I’m going to stop the cats now if you want to come and watch.”

  The cats halted, the doll haunters and Fluffbear unbuttoned the partition, and gazed upon the fruits of their labor.

  “No way is this going to work,” Garon said.

  “No, it be perfect!” Zuula insisted. “Used to have traveling animator shows all de time twenny years ago. Some of dem even had actual animators running dem.”

  “Oh yeah,” Madeline said. “I remembah those. Like most of them were puppeteers lookin’ fah work, and carnies.”

  “Carnies? Sounds like a monster type,” Garon remarked, poking his head in, and using his draconic advantage to swivel his neck until he could see over the other toys.

  “Kinda. Half of ‘em were on tha run from something. I fit right in until they stahted insisting I work days.” Madeline shrugged. “There might have been a few minor disagreements and some bloodless corpses left b
ehind, right before I split. Bleh, just thinking about it makes me taste corndogs. Guess that’s something I don’t have to worry about no more.” She rubbed her mouth, sadly. Some experimentation, and a lot of clean and presses, and in one case the disassembly of her new mouth combined with a thorough cleaning later, and Madeline was forced to the realization that she simply couldn’t drink blood. It did nothing for her now.

  Which was a problem, given the vampire job’s... well, nudging in that direction. It wasn’t exactly a skill, per se, but it was a kind of loose craving. Couple that with the realization that she wouldn’t gain experience from drinking blood unless she actually drank blood, and her regrets were starting to build.

  “Magic Mouth,” Threadbare said.

  “Hello, can you hear me?” The dummy said.

  The toys considered that for a minute. “That still sounds a little like you,” Fluffbear said.

  “Ya putting it in the raht spaht, raht?” Madeline asked.

  “Oh yes. It’s below the strings and chambers we made.”

  The two bears had gotten very good at building voiceboxes over the last couple of days, using their own to improve the range and yield of sound producible. And given a whole human torso to work with, they’d been able to fit in their latest model without the usual worries about miniaturization that normally limited them. The voice came out of the tiny mouth at the bottom of the dummy’s esophagus, fed through some strings and amplifying chambers, and came out sounding like a female human’s voice. And whenever the strings vibrated, the dummy’s jaw moved, so that under the veil she’d look like she was talking. Enough to fool someone who didn’t look too closely.

  That was the plan, anyway. Right now it sounded like someone speaking from the bottom of a well.

  “It’s not working, is it?” Threadbare asked.

  “You’re still way soft,” Garon said. “Can you, I don’t know, yell or something?”

  The dummy’s jaw opened, and a monotone wail issued forth. The cats, already a little freaked out by the whole thing, abandoned wagon.

  “This is creepy,” Missus Fluffbear complained. “Are you sure we can’t use a zombie instead?”

  “Don’t think that would help much,” Garon said. “No, look, this might actually be fine. Animators are supposed to be weird anyway, it’s part of the mystique.”

  “No, this no be mistake,” Zuula insisted. “It work fine.”

  “Mystique, Mom, not mistake.”

  “Is what she said!”

  “Nevermind. Ah, look, Threadbare, could you stop that please?”

  The dummy stopped wailing.

  “You’ve got decent volume, just... I don’t know, work on the voice a bit. Remember how Celia was. Only older.”

  “Like Zuula,” the plush orc grinned.

  “Sweet Nebs no, don’t try to talk like Zuula. Just... it’ll work out fine. Outmarsh isn’t exactly a big city, we won’t be there long. Just enough to find out what we need to know and where to go.”

  “All right,” Threadbare said, as he started sewing up the dummy’s yellow robe. All her clothes were yellow, since it was the color they had the most of. “I think we’re about ready, then.”

  “I still got my resahvations,” Madeline said. “Wooden cats is weird. Be bettah if we had horses.”

  “I’ve never seen a horse so I couldn’t carve them,” Fluffbear shrugged. “But I know cats! And this way if Mopsy or Pulsivar die we can golemify them!”

  “Cats is fine,” Garon said. “But it does mean that you’ll be on your own for a while. Are you sure you’re okay with that?”

  Fluffbear bounced up and down in her seat. “I’m okay with it. It means you’re stronger and that’s good. Besides, I’ve got the kitties to keep me company!”

  The whole cover story depended on Threadbare controlling the cats and the dummy, and the simplest and easiest way to do that was to have all three of them in his party. Which left three slots for other members, as the maximum party size was seven.

  Add to that the fact that Threadbare had an animator skill called “Creator’s Guardians,” which seemed to be meant for animi, but also affected the doll haunters for some weird reason, and the choice was obvious. It was a decent-sized buff, currently about thirteen to all attributes, and at the level they were at it made a significant difference. Made it easier to think, easier to resist bad impulses, easier to survive if something went wrong.

  When, Zuula had pointed out. When something goes wrong.

  “Now that that’s decided, we may as well get moving again,” Threadbare gestured and the wooden cats resumed their travel, clattering down the road.

  “I’ll take watch,” Garon said, heading out to the seat. The cats did a decent job, and could react to simple instructions like “follow the road,” and “stop before you walk off a cliff,” but didn’t do so well with obstacles.

  “Zuula come too,” Said his mother, clambering up on the board.

  “Me three!” Missus Fluffbear raced out front. “I want to practice whipping!”

  “Pass,” Madeline said. “Too bright. I’ll get naht shift.”

  “Good,” said the dummy. “You can help me practice.”

  Madeline chuckled. “Absolutely Missus Mata! Tell me how’s the family?”

  “Oh they’re ingrates, they never call or send lotters.”

  “Letters.”

  “Those too.”

  “And what do you think of the weathah lately?”

  “It’s horrible! Back in my day, it wasn’t raining sunny snowing or whatever.”

  “No no no, you’re supposed ta pick one of those, the one it’s doing right now.“

  Zuula buttoned up the partition. She could still hear the two of them trying to practice small talk, but this helped her to ignore it.

  They were on the outskirts of the moors now, where the rivers of melting snow from the mountains ran down to the beginning of the bowl that was Cylvania’s valley. Hills still jutted up here and there, like the knees of a resting giant, sleeping with his legs crooked. But water sagged and sogged between them, and new spring reeds and tall grasses were poking their heads up, yearning toward the sun with their roots in the wetlands. The road meandered along a natural ridge, lined with willow trees, and Fluffbear got her practice by snapping her whip at passing branches, trying to trim off twigs as the wagon rolled by.

  Eventually Mopsy and Pulsivar returned to the wagon, with the bobcat hopping up to the back, and the tiny cougar curling up around Missus Fluffbear. The little tamer gave up whipping and settled into a petting routine that only a nigh-inexhaustible golem could sustain. Soon enough the cougar’s purrs faded and its sides rose and fell with the rhythm of steady sleep.

  “She’s doing a lot better,” Garon said, studying the sleeping cat. “Way less skittish. More settled.”

  “Cat ghost lady abused her,” Zuula said. “Love heal her. Fluffbear be good tamer.”

  “Thank you. I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time,” Missus Fluffbear said. “But it seems to be working out.”

  “Most people like dat,” Zuula observed, laying back to study the sky. “Even if dey never admit it.”

  As they rolled on, the sky grew cloudier, and Madeline and Threadbare gave off practicing and came forward as well. It was tight room on the buckboard, but the company was good. “I’ve never been anywhere like this before.” Threadbare said, gazing around at the empty marshlands. Occasionally there was a submerged dock, or a fallen pile that could have been a hut at some point, but for the most part it was empty save for foraging birds and Rodents of Unusual Sizes that were content to stay far away from the noisy wagon. “I’ve never been much of anywhere, I guess. The world seemed so big when I was moving around with Celia. But there’s this part of it too, and lots more parts like it, aren’t there?”

  “Oh yeah. It’s way big,” Said Madeline. “Takes about two weeks either way ta cross Sylvania. An’ it’s supposed ta be even biggah outside the Oblivion, but I nev
er seen none of that. It went up befoah I could get out that way. Which is kind of a pity cause I met a lot of nice people from othah lands when I was back in Cylvania City. Nevah ran into one I didn’t like. You could say they had great taste.” She grinned, and her tack teeth glimmered in the rays of the fading sun.

  “Hm. What are those?” Threadbare pointed. There, silhouetted in the falling orb, were what looked like distant pillars.

  Zuula squinted. “Dolmens. Old stones put up by shamans long dead.”

  “Why?”

  “Any reason, really. Back in de day, dolmens were like cure all for anything you need. Old tribes discover rock cutting and hauling technology with newfangled t’ings like rope and slaves and chisels, and go a little nuts. Be making standing stones for calendars, for festivals, for sealing ancient evils, all sort of things. Didn’t know what to do about some’ting? Put dolmens on a hill.” The half-orc doll sighed. “Zuula be pretty sure old shamans got kickbacks from rock sellers in dose days. Fortunately time march on. Wicker tech come along and shamans leave old stones behind. More and more of dem end up bricked. Nowadays you get same hoodoo power out of charms you can fit in you pocket, den old-style dolmen did with sixty tons of fucking rocks.”

  “Think we should check it out?” Garon asked.

  Threadbare squinted. “It would be an awfully long way through the wet mud.”

  “I could try flying over,” Garon offered. “I need to learn sooner or later.”

  “Oh yeah! You can do that!” Madeline brightened.

  Zuula sighed. “Hokay. Stop de wagon. You, child, Slow Regeneration.”