by Craig Askham
“You’re done in this city, soldier.” Jannath was seething, seemingly unable to comprehend how a member of the public, soldier or not, dared to stand up to him, a member of the City Watch. He was a keeper of the peace; his word was law. “There’s nowhere you can go that I won’t find you.”
“Don’t be too sure about that,” Ironshoulder said. He wanted to offer a mocking smile, but was feeling too angry himself. “I go where I choose.”
“I am City Watch!” the other man barked, and Ironshoulder bristled at his arrogance.
“You’re a fat warehouse guard in training, and I do not recognise your authority.” He lifted both hands and gestured around him, pointing at the nearest warehouse with his knife. “Welcome home, Sergeant.”
Jannath sent another tester in his direction, and he swept his knife back down and blocked it again. He could do this all night long. Determination and rage played out a quick battle on the Watchman’s face, the former quickly coming out on top. A thin-lipped smile flickered into being, and he relaxed his stance a little.
“You know, I’ve learned more from you and your pathetic friend this evening than I have in almost a year of investigation. I thank you for that.”
“No problem. Doesn’t say much about your investigative skills, though. I mean, a year? Come on, Sergeant Rikur Jannath of the City Watch. Perhaps it’s time to hand over the reins to somebody with a little more experience?”
He flicked out with his knife, using the distraction to put his body between the Watchman and Lekan, who was crouching on the ground and watching to see how this played out. Assessing his options, making plans, preparing to offer his unconditional support to whoever emerged victorious. Just like a politician. It was only a matter of time before the noise they were making attracted the attention of even the sleepiest of warehouse guards in the vicinity. He needed to end this, quickly. Jannath, though, suddenly wanted to talk.
“Your insults are irrelevant,” he said, allowing the tip of his sword to dip slightly. He was facing away from the mirror warehouse again, and jerked his head in its direction. “I may not know where you come from, but I know that you arrive here in that building. Now I have that information, we can start sending you back. You’re not welcome here.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about. You sound a little crazy, Sergeant.”
“Perhaps.” His smile turned into a smirk. “We’ll see once my teams have torn that place apart.”
Ironshoulder sighed. This was worrying. The Watch had been arresting gamers for a while now, but he’d been unaware that Stillwater’s antics had aroused enough suspicion for them to have formed some kind of task force to formally investigate matters. Not only that, but this task force’s investigations seemed to have progressed far enough to be able to talk about sending people back. He’d underestimated Rikur Jannath, it seemed, and an investigation of his own might be prudent.
“What is it you expect to find?” he asked, and the other man laughed.
“I believe I have your full attention now, Givrok Ironshoulder.” He paused. “What an odd name, by the way. Not from around here, I’d wager.”
“I’m flattered that you felt the need to ask around about me. It’s Shadziri.”
“It’s not, and neither are you. A Shadziri standing on another Shadziri’s shoulders would only just be able to kiss you on the lips.”
“What a scary thought,” Ironshoulder laughed. “And quite an exaggeration. I’m obviously only half-Shadziri.”
“And the other half is what? Giant? Come now, soldier. Be straight with me. I’m quite sure you have no intention of letting me leave here alive, so what do you have to lose?”
“My job, for a start.”
“Which is what?”
“Fixing things.”
“Like this? Like me?” He was becoming more animated now, sensing he was finally about to get some answers after nearly a year of dedicating his life to this project. Ironshoulder almost felt sorry for him. The idiot had almost completely dropped his guard. He thought he was conducting an interrogation, it seemed.
“Yes, Rikur. Like you.”
“Where are you from? Why are you here? Do you mean to invade us? Are you an advance party?”
Ironshoulder laughed. He couldn’t help it, and it was the first honest laugh he thought he’d allowed for a long time. Straight from the belly. He pointed behind him at Lekan.
“Does this man look like a scout for an invading army to you? Seriously? You’re reading too much into this, Rikur. Whoever we are and whatever our intentions may be, I assure you we’re not here to invade you. Your taverns, maybe. And your whores, definitely. But we mean you no harm, I promise you that.”
Up came the Watchman’s sword again, and Ironshoulder tensed. It wasn’t an attack, though. The man was jabbing his blade at him to make a point.
“No harm?” he hissed. “No harm? Tell that to the swathe of innocent people your people are cutting their way through! Tell it to Masika Kivu, strangled to death yesterday by one of your kind because her breasts were too real for his liking! Tell it to Roukin the bard, who had his throat cut last week for not knowing how to play any beetles! Nobody even knows what that means, Ironshoulder. How can breasts be anything but real? And how does somebody even play a beetle? You come here with your strange ways and your white fucking teeth, speaking our language but littering it with words not even a dae-Miranwel would recognise, and you talk about curiosity killing cats! And you drink our ale, and you eat our meat, and you kill us like we’re playthings put here for your amusement! Are you gods, Ironshoulder? Or did the gods just send you to our world to carry out their judgements?”
Ironshoulder glanced over Jannath’s shoulder at the mirror warehouse. As ever, it looked deserted. Even if the Watchman started searching it now, it would be weeks before he found the portal. Like looking for a needle in a haystack. Or a mirror in a mirror warehouse. The senior management at Stillwater would have thrown enough money at the situation by then to have made the problem go away. Perhaps he could get away with letting the man go, reporting the issue to his superiors, and letting them start spending.
“We are not gods, Rikur,” he said, softly. “I’m sorry if we gave you that impression.”
“I don’t want your apologies,” the other man said. “I want you to go home. All of you.”
Ironshoulder nodded. He understood the man’s fear. He still had a job to do, though. Letting the Watchman explore the warehouse wasn’t an option, and he knew it. Killing him was within his remit; he’d face no punishment for it. In fact, he’d probably get a pat on the back.
“Not going to happen,” he said, softly. “Not whilst there’s a profit to be made.”
“Very well.” His reply was stiff, maybe even offended, as if he’d expected to be able to order these unwanted visitors to stop coming and they’d simply do it. Ironshoulder saw him tense, and knew another attack was coming. He shifted his balance onto the balls of his feet, and waited for it. It never came. Instead, there was an explosion of pain in the back of his head, and then darkness.
Seven
“Wake up, Givrok.” Somebody was shaking his shoulder with force, and Ironshoulder didn’t like it. He was about to shove the offender away, when the reality of the situation hit him with almost as much force as the blow to his head.
“Shit!”
He forced himself up into a sitting position from his comfortable bed on the cobbles, and immediately groaned as dizziness nearly overcame him.
“Whoa there, take it easy.”
He knew the voice. Forcing open his eyes, he slowly let them come to focus on Pej Vahdat. Even through his misted vision and the dim light, he could see the guide looked ashen. It took a moment to remember that the Rakeshi had suffered a similar fate to himself.
“What the…” Finishing the sentence proved too difficult.
“I’ve only just come around, myself,” said Pej. He gestured around them. “By the looks of it, you were att
acked by these three here. I’m guessing the Watchman thanked them by killing them.”
Ironshoulder looked around. The first body he saw was that of Sally Slapcabbage, her throat slit from ear to ear. Almost on top of her, two men were sprawled at unnatural angles, having suffered similar fates. Looking closer, he recognised them as the two drunkards who had threatened him not far from The Chirping Cricket.
“Sons of bitches,” he murmured, pushing himself to his knees and crawling over to the dead prostitute. Reaching for her hand, he prised open her fingers to retrieve the purse she’d taken from him. He was angry with himself; not only had he fallen for the drunken act of the two robbers, he’d invited this upon himself by being way too free and easy with his money. He’d never been mugged before; the sheer size of him usually discouraged anyone from even considering it. His heavy money purse had proven too much of a temptation, though. And he’d told old Sally exactly where he was going. He looked around some more, but there was no sign of either Lekan or the Watchman.
“They thought they could rob me underneath the nose of a Watchman,” he surmised. “And that he’d thank them for saving his life. Fair play to them, the fucking idiots.” For some reason, he reached forward and palmed Sally’s eyes closed. Her toothless mouth was locked in a terrified scream. He left the other two robbers’ eyes open, unmoved by their similar expressions.
“I’m going to assume our friend Lekan is doing whatever it takes to save his own skin right now,” Pej said, and the subtle reminder brought Ironshoulder’s focus very much back to the job in hand.
“The portal,” he breathed, picking up his dropped knife and then climbing unsteadily to his feet.
“I don’t see them up ahead,” the guide pointed out, quite needlessly. “They’re probably already inside the warehouse.”
“We’ll catch them before Lekan finds his way to the portal,” Ironshoulder said with a confidence he wasn’t sure he actually felt. “It’s a rabbit warren in there; there’s no way Lekan will be able to lead him straight to it.”
“If you say so.”
“You up for this, Pej?” he wondered, breaking into a slow jog until he was sure his body could handle something quicker. The guide fell into step beside him.
“As long as you take care of the fighting,” he said.
“Oh, don’t you worry about that. You just concentrate on securing Lekan.”
With that he quickened his pace, keeping his knife in his hand. The pain in his head settled down to a dull ache accentuated by each heavy footfall, and he was back in control of his body again. Anger fuelled him, as it had done most of his life. Staring ahead at the mirror warehouse, he waited patiently for the gap between him and it to close. A couple of curious guards watched him from the windows of their own warehouses; he was aware of their silhouettes in his peripheral vision. The only sound he could hear was the pounding of his heavy boots on the cobbles. Next to him, matching him stride for stride despite their height difference, Pej Vahdat’s softer boots were silent as they struck the ground. When they reached the unlit warehouse, a darkened behemoth of a building constructed entirely of stone, they slowed down to a fast walk. The guide’s eyes darted left and right, on the lookout for attack. Ironshoulder didn’t bother; he knew Lekan and Jannath were already inside. Ignoring the huge double wooden doors at the front of the building, the pair of Stillwater employees instead hurried along the side of it. There was a small door there, also wooden, but so dwarfed by the sheer size of the four-storey elevation that it was almost unnoticeable. Ironshoulder grasped the iron handle and wrenched the door open, stepping into the musty smelling warehouse with his knife held somewhat uselessly in front of him. Pej followed him, reaching for the sconce on the wall and swearing when he realised none of the unlit lanterns were present.
“They’re not exactly playing fair,” he muttered.
Ironshoulder ignored him. There was enough moonlight filtering through the many windows for their eyes not to need time to adjust, so a lantern would only have given away their presence. Even if Jannath had left them one, he wouldn’t have allowed Pej to light it. He moved silently along the wall of the building, away from the main storage floor and towards the maze of corridors that hadn’t existed before Stillwater had purchased the warehouse. Coming to an interior door, he paused briefly in front of it to make sure he couldn’t hear any sign of ambush the other side of it, and then went through.
Once inside and hidden from the windows, there were lanterns. They were at regular intervals along the smooth plaster walls, each one identical to the next in order to confuse the uninitiated. On the two men went, taking lefts and rights without hesitation, never taking a wrong turn. The various routes were burned into each man’s memory, something that simply wasn’t possible for a gamer like Lekan; regular users were identified and taken different routes in order to prevent them learning the way without their guides, although the permutations were finite, of course. There was no doubt he would, eventually, get to where he wanted to be. But unless he’d been unconscious for longer than he thought, Ironshoulder was confident he and Pej would arrive at the portal in time to stop them going through.
The journey was frustratingly long, despite them taking what they both knew to be the quickest, most direct route. Several times one of them reached for the other’s arm and brought them both to a halt, listening for the signs of movement they thought they’d heard. On more than one occasion they both heard footsteps somewhere close, and knew their quarry hadn’t found their way to the portal yet. At one point it seemed they were almost travelling next to each other, separated only by the wall between them. Then they were gone again, their paths taking them in different directions. Ironshoulder allowed himself a smile of grim satisfaction before continuing.
Finally, they reached the door that led to the room with the portal inside. It was already open. The noises they thought they’d heard couldn’t have been their quarry, after all.
“Shit,” Ironshoulder murmured, as he entered. Right inside the doorway, a figure was slumped on the ground. He knelt down, and felt the man’s neck for a pulse. It was Rokmagar Jadegrip, the Stillwater sentry placed here to guard the portal. Back in the real world, Ironshoulder knew him as Iuliu Tiutiu, a burly Romanian with a huge nose and about seventeen kids. He had a faint pulse, but was a long way from consciousness. “I’ll be back for you, Choo-choo,” he promised. As he stood again, his face was set in stone.
“Alive?” Pej whispered, and Ironshoulder nodded. Moving forward, he started weaving his way around mirrors. There was one for every occasion; large and small, some propped against others, and some free-standing. Some of them were ornate, some of them simple, but the one thing they all had in common was that they were all damaged in some way. Either the glass was cracked or, in some cases, missing entirely, or their frames were broken or split. None of them were going anywhere in a hurry, forever destined to do nothing but provide cover for the portal. And there it was, straight ahead now, eight feet tall and unremarkable apart from the fact that it wasn’t damaged in any way. That, and the feeling there was something not quite right about the glass; it looked more like liquid mercury than glass, somehow defying the laws of gravity by not dripping to the floor.
“Hey!” he shouted, disturbing Jannath and Lekan as they stood uncertainly in front of it, staring at reflections that were ever so slightly distorted. Both of them jumped out of their skins. Jannath reacted by reaching a hand out to touch what should have been glass, and suddenly his whole body was sucked in. Ironshoulder rushed forward and batted Lekan out of the way, then leapt through headfirst. As usual, the portal sucked him in like he was a speck of dust caught in a whirlwind. He lost all feeling in his limbs, and then the rest of his body until he was nothing more than a floating soul. This could have gone on for seconds or days, he had no way of knowing, and the only thing he felt was a vague sense of disappointment. He’d failed to stop the Watchman, and his employers weren’t going to take kindly to it. Still, it di
dn’t seem that important in the scheme of things; everything in here was muted and detached. Not for the first time, he half hoped that the portal failed to spit him back out the other side, and kept him safely ensconced in this void for the rest of time.
No such luck.
With a start, he realised he was back in his body. He knew he’d only been stood there for a matter of seconds, but it might well have been a month for all he knew. It was like waking up from an afternoon nap and literally not knowing what planet he was on. He’d never get used to it.
He was back in The Cellar, as everyone related to Stillwater called it. Based in a nondescript building that was dwarfed by modern skyscrapers, the London base for all things Stillwater flew perfectly under the radar. The portal itself was underneath the building, hence the nickname. Strips of overhead light were harsh on everyone in the room, making them look pale and ill. The room was full, as always; fifteen to twenty people, most of whose jobs he could only guess at. Most were geeky tech nerds who did things to the portal he couldn’t even imagine, but they were far more important than the soldiers who were now pointing their assault weapons at him and Rikur Jannath. Thankfully there was no John Bonfield present, as the head of London operations was not the type to take kindly to unsanctioned visitors through his portal. It was obviously a quiet period, with no groups of gamers waiting their turn to step through and start their adventures. No actors, either, adjusting their uniforms before starting their shifts as wizards, bards, serving wenches, or anything in between. Jessica Towsey was present, though, which he didn’t mind too much. Ninety years old if she was a day, the mischievous old thespian stood ramrod straight as she stared at the pair of newcomers, arms behind her back and eyebrows raised in amusement. She had no need to be here without a herd of actors and actresses to shepherd, but here she was nonetheless, and he’d take her presence over Bonfield’s any day of the week.
