by Greg Curtis
“I'm not blaming you,” Adern replied. “I'm just saying he's the only one we have. We need him.”
“Then we give him the unguent. He'll be grateful. And he can start travelling with us to the other prisons. We can decide on the rest later.”
“It may not be enough,” Hilda announced. “I've never seen injuries like that. I don't suppose I ever will again. And I don't know if he's strong enough to travel.”
“People get hurt sometimes,” Larissa told her. “They get better.”
“Not like that,” the healer told her. “No one gets hurt like that and gets better. No one survives.”
“Healer?” Sorsha jumped in. That sounded bad. She knew the man had some scars but no more than that. And besides she was sick of lying in her cot unnoticed while everyone talked all around her as if she wasn't there. It was very rude. “I know the man has scars, but …”
“It's not the scars,” Hilda answered her. “They're bad, but understandable. He was injured horribly as a small child. Everywhere the beast's teeth and claws caught him, disease entered and the scars became great welts. And welts don't stretch the way normal skin does. When he grew, they didn't grow with him. Not so well. So the scars are tight and restricting his movement. They hurt. The unguent will ease that and allow the scars to soften and in time sink back into the skin.”
“But the problem isn't the scars. It's what caused them. I only saw a little. But the circular wounds around his shoulder are teeth marks. Front and back. His entire shoulder was in the lion's mouth. And all of those puncture wounds are stretched into lines, because the beast was ripping his entire arm off. The arm doesn't move properly because the bones were crushed by the strength of his bite. The blood loss from that injury alone should have killed him in seconds.”
“I didn't see the injury to his hip, but I've been told it's the same. And he doesn't walk properly. He hides it. But it costs him a lot of effort just to put one foot in front of the other.”
“And the scratches, the claw marks, to his front and back, his face, they're full thickness and full depth. On a five year old child. The lions practically tore him apart. His ribs must have been sliced to ribbons. His clavicle is the same. Pieces of bone. I don't know how he can even breathe with those bones as they are. I don't know what's holding him together. But I do know he should be dead. You don't survive injuries like that.”
“The physicians –,” Larissa began.
“Are useless!” Hilda finished for her. “They couldn't heal that! No one could, least of all a bunch of glorified butchers with some herbs and a bit of twine! This technology! This … this … twisted metal science of theirs! It's completely useless!”
“Well we have to do something for him,” Adern jumped back in. “And if the unguent will make things easier for him, then we can at least do that. So give it to me and I'll take it to him, and you can keep working on the others. And hopefully in time he'll be well enough to travel to the next city.”
But how many cities would they have to visit, Sorsha wondered? They'd now heard of half a dozen of these prisons, and her family were slowly freeing their people from them. But without the services of a Smythe, it was slow. And this Manx was the only one they had. Adern was right, they needed him. And they needed him well enough to travel and willing to help their people.
What her fellow walker didn't know though, was that Larissa had been holding something back. The other Smythes, the ones in Clairmont, had been more than unwilling to help them. They'd turned weapons on her and her people. They'd threatened them. Something had terrified them. She suspected it was the Silver Order.
Larissa had also kept one other thing quiet. Manx's father, the man who had dangled his own son above a bunch of lions in a pit as part of some drunken challenge, was still drunk. More than drunk. He could no longer stand. Instead he had to be wheeled around in a chair by the servants, and when he'd met with Larissa and her people he'd been so far into his cups that he hadn't even been able to raise his hand to point at them as he'd yelled obscenities. Was that guilt, she wondered? Or was he just a lush at the end of his life?
Whatever the truth he had sent them away at gunpoint, threatened to kill them if they returned, and forbidden any member of his family from helping them on pain of throwing them out of the family. They would find no help there. Which left them with Maxwell Smythe as their only hope. And a King and a Court who were obviously willing to break all their normal procedures and protocols as they dealt with what they saw as a threat. Willing to kill.
She sighed quietly, knowing what they had to do. She didn't want to do it – it was wrong. But her hands had been tied. They had to get their people free before a war began.
“Yes, bring him the medicine. And when you do make sure that he understands that his services are required. It's time for us to organise the first mission to free our people from the nearby cities. And he will be a part of that. Master Smythe will help us willingly or unwillingly. But no matter what he will help us.”
“She sighed a little more. “If they're already sending out spies and assassins for us, there's no choice anymore. Not for any of us.”
“He will object.” Adern pointed out.
“Very probably,” she agreed. “But if the spies have reported back about me to their masters in Windhaven, they've likely reported about him too. They will have noted down names and places of people that pose the most immediate threat. And no doubt assassins will be coming for him in due course.”
“He needs our people free as much as we do. The more spell-casters are out there in the world, the more confusion there will be and the safer everyone will be.” She was sure of that, even though it wasn't a good thing to say.
“Now lets turn to the mission itself. We're going to need one of the steam wagons. Maybe several. And the sorcerers, if they could start thinking about the construction of some gliders.”
She started marshalling her thoughts on their plans for the future. If she was awake, and it didn't look like she was going to be able to go back to sleep any time soon, she should do something with her time.
Chapter Seventeen
Fog was interesting. Now that he understood a little more about it, that was. Six hundred years ago Gabria Smythe had written about it. She had told the world how it was just water vapour – which he'd already known. And then she'd explained that the secret to controlling it was to apply just enough heat and the right amount of stillness to it. Then you could shape it into what you wanted. Like a cloud of mist that surrounded you on three sides but which allowed you a clear path to walk through. That would be useful.
He was practising that, as best he could. Now that he could control the pigs – somewhat – he was moving on with his studies. Manx figured that if he had these magics at his disposal he should learn to use them. And he had the time. His work with the magic of emotional transference as Torm of Smyte had referred to the other magic he'd tried to use, had been a mixed success. He now knew he could control the magic – if he could control his emotions. But that was the problem. He lacked self-control. So now he was trying to reshape the mist instead. It required less emotional stability. Just calm and concentration. And it was just water vapour. There was nothing to fear.
So far though, he didn't seem to have a lot of those things either. But he was still learning to focus the mist in small, tight areas. It wasn't easy, but as he'd already learned, it was safer than bending the emotions of wild animals.
After this he might learn to wrap himself in shadow, he thought, assuming he had that gift. He still wasn't sure what he could do. But for the moment, learning to control the mist was enough. For him anyway.
Of course not all were so impressed.
“Why this damned mist?” Whitey asked for maybe the thousandth time as she watched from the safety of a deck chair. “I mean there are a thousand things to play with, why mist?!”
“Because I can,” he replied. “I don't have a lot of magic, but I have that.”
&nb
sp; “And you don't want it!” She told him. “Nobody would want it. Mist is cold and wet. You'll get your fur damp.”
“I don't have fur. And I don't mind the damp.”
“Yes, but what about me?!” She pleaded. “I'll get cold and damp! It makes my fur messy!”
Manx groaned. Of course she was thinking about herself. She never thought about anyone else. He should have remembered that. “Well why don't you go inside. The mist won't follow you there.”
“But it's warm out here!” She protested. “I'm comfortable! Why don't you go inside, monkey man?!”
“Because I was here first.” He told her bluntly. “This is my house, my back yard and my magic. You don't have a say in it.” But he knew even as he said it that she wouldn't accept that argument. She wouldn't believe it. As far as she was concerned this was her home. He was her servant. And he was just being contrary.
He was saved from having to reply by the sound of someone knocking on the front door. And for that he was grateful. These arguments with the cat never went anywhere. Least of all anywhere useful. And he never won them. So he let the mist go, got up and walked inside to see who was bothering him now.
When he opened the door to see him though, he was surprised.
“Adern!” He hadn't expected to see the man again. After all he'd done what he'd asked. Their business was concluded, wasn't it?
“Good to see you again too.” The man smiled at him, an expression that was horribly disturbing on someone with three eyes, and then handed him a jar of white unguent. “For your scars. It should help.”
“What does it do?” Manx accepted the jar and stared at it suspiciously. He wasn't sure he trusted these people.
“Do I look like a healer?” Adern shrugged. “All I know is that it'll help. You were injured as a child. You've grown. Your scars have stretched too much and now they're too tight. And this will help loosen them. It may flatten them too in time. Make you feel comfortable. Just rub it on every day.”
“Ahh … thank you.” Manx kept staring at the jar, wondering if it was a trick of some sort. “I thought you spell-casters wanted nothing to do with me?” In fact that was pretty much exactly what they'd told him.
“We're in two minds about that. Smythes are considered … dangerous. Untrustworthy. But you can be useful as you proved a few days ago. And we owed you.”
Manx was about to give the man his usual protest – that he was a librarian – when he saw something in Adern's face and he realised the truth.
“Oh praise Freda! This isn't a gift at all! It's an inducement! You want something!” He kicked himself for having been so stupid as to imagine anything else.
“It's not –,” Adern began.
“What do you want?” Manx asked him tiredly. There was no point in wasting time with denials.
“There are other dimensional prisons –.”
“Shite!” It didn't take a lot to guess what he meant. And he didn't want it. “In Winstone?” But even as he asked he already knew the answer. He couldn't be that lucky. So he wasn't surprised when Adern shook his head.
“No! I don't want to get involved! And I don't travel well!” he told the walker.
“And you can't have my monkey face!” Whitey yelled back down the hallway from her place on the back deck. “He's mine!” Maybe she should have thought twice about saying that. Not least because the walker clearly didn't understand a word she was saying. And Manx wasn't exactly impressed about being claimed as some sort of property.
“The unguent will help with that, and there are untold thousands of people trapped in these prisons. They need your help.”
“No!” Whitey yelled even louder than before.
“Is your cat alright?” Adern asked.
“She's threatening to scratch your eyes out,” Manx told him. “She does that a lot.”
“Oh.” The man looked uncertainly behind Manx into his home.
“Go and find someone else.” Manx handed the man back his bottle of unguent. He wanted no part of this. And no medicine would persuade him otherwise. In the end he only wanted one thing from his life. For the heart of the city to be cleared of the damned vines so he could go back to work.
“It's yours.” Adern pushed the bottle back at him. “And it will help. So use it.” His expression suddenly hardened.
“And I'm sorry but there is no one else. We went to Clairmont. Your family tried to kill our people. They pointed guns at them and threatened to shoot them. You're all we have and we have to free our people. Before things turn to war. As many as possible, as quickly as possible.
“War?!”
“They've already sent spies and assassins after us. The soldiers will be next. So I've been instructed to tell you that you aren't being given a choice. We have to free as many of our people as possible, across the realm. It will delay the battle at the least. And if enough are free, it will stop it. The King and his Court won't dare attack us.”
“Even now our people are working out the route to take, and sending people ahead to each of the cities to help with the prisoners when they're released. I'll be back in three days with the others. And you'd better be packed and ready to go by then.” He turned to walk away, but abruptly stopped and turned back to face him.
“Oh and Larissa says, don't try to run. You are being watched. And she also says that your name will have been reported back to the Court and the Silver Order. There may be assassins on your tail as there are on ours.”
With that he turned once more and finally walked out of the front yard, leaving Manx standing there in his doorway, wondering what he was supposed to do. This wasn't right! He'd become a slave to these people. And he hadn't done anything to deserve this sort of treatment! And now assassins? More assassins?! How did his life keep going so wrong?! But apparently he wasn't the one most upset by this turn of events. The cat was muttering furiously to herself and threatening the retreating walker and most of the rest of the world with retribution for this crime.
“What are you complaining about?” He asked her angrily as he walked back. “I'm the one who's being conscripted!”
“Do you know how much effort I've gone to to train you?!” She stared at him. “It's not like you're a natural student! And now I'm going to have to start again with another monkey face?! It's just wrong!” She glared at him as he walked out into the sunshine. “You chattering monkeys have no consideration for my well-being! You ignore your responsibilities!”
“You're selfish!” She started licking herself angrily. “Just plain selfish!”
Chapter Eighteen
Three days passed quietly and by the end of the third one Manx had begun to hope that the spell-casters' plans had changed. But they hadn't and on the morning of the fourth day, Manx heard the chugging of a steam wagon approaching. He gathered that the spell-casters had arrived, and conscripted some help, much as they had conscripted him.
He sighed. His bag was packed. He'd figured he would have to be ready if and when they came. Because he didn't know how to fight them. Especially not now when the city was over run with strange looking people and magic was everywhere. How did you fight magic? At least the unguent was in it despite the fact that he'd intended to throw it away out of spite.
But the damned stuff worked! It wasn't perfect. He wasn't even sure it was magical. But he could already feel the scars loosening a little, granting him a fraction more movement. He was grateful for that. At least he was getting something out of this.
“Alright you,” he told Whitey as he reached for his bag and headed for the front door. “The neighbour will be filling your bowl every morning and the back windows open a few inches so you can get in and out as you want.” That should be enough he thought. Not that he knew how long he was going to be away for. He didn't even know where he was going. But at least if they had a steam wagon to take them there, it would be quick. Not as quick as a train, but quicker than a horse and carriage.
“What?!” The cat stared at him in disgust. “
You think you can just run away and leave me?! Walk out on your obligations?!”
“Ahh …?!” Manx didn't know quite how to answer that.
“Now open that door, and make sure you explain to your fellow monkeys about my requirements!” She jumped on to his bag as he set it down on the floor just in front of the door.
“You have requirements?” he asked. “For the trip? As in you think you're coming with me?”
“There it is. That monkey brain. Forever catching up with things even a new born kitten would know instantly!”
“But you can't come with me!” he protested.
“You'd be amazed what I can do!” she replied. “And someone has to keep you safe. I've put a lot of time and effort into training you. First Ella and now you. I don't want to have to start again with yet another monkey man!”
