Beneath Ceaseless Skies #187

by Rich Larson

  “Fatal in large quantities, yes.” Crane opened his case. “But if properly prepared, using solely the extract, ingesting a small amount only mimics death.” He held up a tiny satchel of powder and handed it over.

  Durden inspected it, sniffed it. His face was dark but his eyes were sparks. “What are you planning?”

  “Many things, Mister Durden,” Crane said, reaching past his dyes and powders for the yellow vial. “But as the first order of business, I need to send a message.”

  * * *

  Durden kept watch while Crane prepared himself for the journey, winding a scrap of his ruined shirt around his arm as a tourniquet. His veins bulged like blue worms.

  “I did try it, just once,” Durden said from the door, still rolling the extract in his palm. “Threw it all up in the end.”

  “Fortunate,” Crane said. He held up the syringe, tapping his nail on the glass, and gave a last languid glance around the cell. “Do you only make gargoyles?”

  “I make game pieces, sometimes. Sometimes dice.” Durden shrugged. “But for me, only the gargoyles, yeah.”

  “And why such an affinity for the monsters?” Crane asked, sliding the needle into his favored vein. He pulled with a practiced thumb, drawing a tendril of blood up into the yellow. The mixture swirled, almost luminous.

  “They remind me of Brask,” Durden said. “And they’re ugly.”

  Crane curled his fingers around the godbone, then he slammed the cloudy liquid back into his bloodstream and was gone. The stone walls of the room crumbled around him, and he found himself hurtling through the cell block, ribboning through moving legs and gesticulating arms. He burrowed through more stone and suddenly felt hot sunshine, though he had no skin.

  Down the rough dirt path, past the purple knot of hanged man’s tongue, into the spice-smelling trees. Crane felt the beating hearts of birds and great bats as he slid through the foliage. He plowed through tangled vines and toothy fronds, and all at once he was out of the trees, onto the beach, skimming over sand, and an instant after that he was bare inches over the water, conjuring salt-spray as he danced bodiless along the waves.

  * * *

  Gilchrist snapped from his sleep when the wind changed. As he sat upright, blinking on gound, he saw that the cartographer had felt it, too. The old man was peering into the darkening sky with his brow furrowed.

  “Reversing,” he croaked. “Blowing northerly. That damn well’s not natural. Impossible, that is.”

  “Improbable,” Gilchrist conceded. The sloop’s sail billowed taut all at once and the sloop lurched dangerously. Gilchrist caught the side.

  “Purgatory wants me back,” the cartographer laughed. “Trying to wreck us. Can’t go into this shit, we’ll be dashed on the rock.” His laughter devolved to coughing as Gilchrist stood up, steadying himself on the mast. The wind rippled his clothes.

  “We’ll turn her,” he said. “We’ll have to come around the back of the gaol again.” He began working the winch, bringing the anchor up out of the sand. “That overhang. Will there be anyone watching from it?”

  “Not usually, no.” The cartographer was gasping again, and his sleeve had come away blotted with blood. “They only go up there when there are corpses to drop.”

  * * *

  Durden was dead, one arm crabbed underneath him, the other flung out stiff-fingered on the stone. His lips were bruise-colored and his shirt soaked scarlet. In the flickering lantern light, he looked like a nightmare.

  “I believe we met earlier,” Crane said, conversationally, to the gaoler who was now watching him as one would a wild animal. “After I’d communed. We spoke briefly, did we not? I believe I may have mentioned the supplication.”

  The gaoler didn’t reply, hand still strumming against the handle of his club. The other prisoners had been driven back to their cells, but their laughter and their howls carried through the stinking air.

  “I thought of using a bird,” Crane continued, “but it didn’t seem profound enough.”

  The gaoler shook his head, and when he spoke his voice was just slightly unsteady. “You’re a damned madman.”

  Crane inclined his head. He’d returned to picking dried dye from under his nails by the time a pale-faced Fletcher arrived with a shroud bundled under his arm, shadowed by another of his men.

  “What the hell have you done, Crane?” Fletcher demanded. “Get the document and get out, I said.” He froze for an instant when he saw Durden’s body. “Did you check?” he snapped to the gaoler.

  “Dead. Not a flicker.”

  It didn’t stop Fletcher from kneeling, checking the pulse for himself. Durden’s throat was still as marble.

  “Damn you, Crane.” Fletcher stood up, wiping his thumb on the shroud. “No trouble, I said. What the hell happened?”

  Crane spread his arms at his sides. “He accosted me with a blade. In order to maintain appearances, I thought it best to engage him myself rather than demand that your men intervene. Realism is our priority, is it not?”

  Fletcher stared down at the corpse, breathing heavy. He turned to his man. “Tell the warden it was a suicide,” he ordered. “And throw those damned animals some bread and meats to keep them quiet. Not a word about the pale man, understand? From anyone. He was never here.”

  The man nodded and strode out of the cell; a moment later Crane heard him dragging his club along iron bars and shouting for quiet.

  “And you, wrap the body,” Fletcher said, bunching the shroud and tossing it to the gaoler. “We’re going to deal with this right now. Before it gets any worse.”

  “Have I upset you, Mister Fletcher?” Crane asked, watching the gaoler try to avoid bloodying his hands winding the fabric around Durden’s stiff limbs.

  “Never knew when to stop jawing, did you, Crane.” Fletcher bared his sharp teeth, but he wasn’t smiling. “Help him carry the body.”

  Crane obliged, hooking his hands under Durden’s armpits as the gaoler lifted ankles. He’d done a poor job with the wrapping, and one limp arm flopped free before they’d even exited the cell. The prisoners had been silenced by threats and bribes, but they watched like raptors as the strange procession shuffled down the cellblock. Fletcher was leading the way, snarling at anyone too close to their bars.

  His bracelet unlocked another gate, and then they were stumping through a dim corridor to a stairwell. Durden’s body grew heavy as they dragged him up the winding steps. Every grunt and every footfall echoed, and Fletcher was visibly sweating.

  “You appeared to recognize this particular inmate,” Crane panted, as they crested the rough-hewn stairs. “Was he a friend, perhaps?”

  Fletcher didn’t reply, but he fingered the bracelet on his wrist. Crane could smell sea-tinged air as they marched down a shorter corridor, this one bowed by sagging wood rafters, and, after Fletcher keyed open the damp door, into a small circular room. Wind sucked at his clothes as they entered, shrieking from a gaping hole set dead center in the stone floor. Fletcher stalked to the dark mouth and dropped a gob of spit. He nodded to himself, then turned and spoke over the windy groan.

  “Into a box.” Wooden caskets, weighted with rocks, were leaned up on the walls like dominoes. Crane let Durden’s upper half drop to the floor, not as gently as he’d intended. The gaoler held onto the corpse’s ankles for a second, eyes still fixed on Crane’s blood-smeared hands, then did the same. They hauled the coffin off the wall to fall with a bone-deep thud.

  As Crane helped wrestle Durden into the box, he saw a nostril twitch. “Do you remember how I told you I can disappear at will?” he asked the gaoler. The man stood abruptly, shivered.

  Fletcher, meanwhile, was staring down at Durden’s still body. “The warden’ll believe it,” he muttered. “Knows the little maggot’s tried before.” His expression clouded. “He was bloody beautiful when he first washed up here with that smuggler. Skin soft as a baby. Before the sun crisped him and his nose got smashed in.”

  “Drop him?” the gaoler pressed.


  Fletcher shook from his reverie. “Drop him,” he said, spinning the bracelet at his wrist one final time. “And then get a box for the pale one.”

  “Mister Fletcher, we had an accord.” Crane opened the case in his waistband with one innocuous hand. “Think of the silver.”

  “That was before you made me this mess,” Fletcher snapped. His eyes darted again to Durden’s body in the box. “Grab him.”

  The gaoler advanced on Crane, club in hand. Crane moved around the howling hole, towards the half-open door. The gaoler sidestepped to block his way.

  “Would you like me to vanish, now?” Crane asked. “As I described?”

  “Too late for bribes,” the gaoler said. “You can vanish down the hole, bastard.”

  He reached, and in the same instant Crane flung his hand up from his case. The powder burst into a searing black cloud. The gaoler stumbled backward with a wail, and Crane put a shoulder into his belly, shoved hard. Clutching at his face, the gaoler toppled back through the doorway just as Crane slammed the door and threw the rusted bolt.

  As he spun back, Fletcher clapped his hands together, just twice. “That’s what you call dramatic, isn’t it?” he said, taking a wide berth around the hole. “Does you no good, Crane. You had a lucky stick with Durden, but I know you’re not a knifeman.” He groped in his belt for a narrow blade. “And those little tricks of yours only work once.”

  “One more trick,” Crane said, nodding towards the box.

  Durden’s green eyes flicked open, and whatever words had been in Fletcher’s throat turned to a strangled grunt. He stood rooted to the stone as Durden grimaced, shook himself, and unfolded from the box like a woken gargoyle. Crane could almost see the soul-stealer stories racing through Fletcher’s skull.

  Durden pulled the obsidian shard from his sleeve. Even with the drug in his blood and one arm hanging numb, he was quick. It was only two furious heartbeats before Fletcher’s knife was spinning down through the hole and Durden’s blade was nestled against the man’s bobbing throat.

  “I should have taken your balls when I had the chance,” Fletcher said through his teeth.

  Durden nodded to the empty box, and when he spoke Crane could tell the words weren’t his. “Lie down on your back.”

  Fletcher’s eyes widened for a moment with recognition, then he sneered. Staring first at Durden, then at Crane, he stepped into the box and lowered himself down. There was a pounding on the door; the gaoler had his sight back.

  “If I hadn’t fucked you, someone else would have,” Fletcher said. “And if it weren’t for me, those animals would have torn you apart as soon as the smuggler skived off.”

  “Like you tore up the islander boy,” Durden said. “I remember that. You tossed him out this hole when you were done with him.”

  “But not you,” Fletcher croaked. The pounding at the door intensified.

  “Open your throat,” Durden said, considering the obsidian in his hand. “Maybe it’ll be faster than drowning. Don’t bother with the wrists, that’s too slow.”

  He tossed the shard into the casket, and then, as Fletcher opened his mouth, he slammed the lid shut, his tanned face unreadable. “He told me he had a cousin,” Durden said vaguely. “A famous player, in Lensa or Lentha or whatever the damned place is called. But they don’t let women go on a stage, so boys have to play those parts, the women’s parts, until their voices break.” He put both hands on the box. “I used to eat sand every day, trying to roughen it.”

  Crane put his shoulder into the casket’s edge and together they pushed it along the stone floor, scraping like bone. On the lip of the hole, they paused. Crane listened for Fletcher’s breathing, but the wind tore all other sounds away. Night waves roiled below, pitch black.

  “I’ll need a new blade before I carve the dice for you,” Durden said. Crane nodded. They pushed, and the weighted casket dropped like a meteor. More footfalls came from the corridor, more voices rough with urgency. The damp door buckled under a renewed assault.

  “I assume you have not forgotten how to swim,” Crane said.

  In answer, Durden pinched his nose with one hand, cupped himself with the other, and stepped off into nothing. Crane, unable to avoid a small sound of admiration, lowered himself down into it more carefully, bony fingers splayed on the stone lip. He eyed the drop, reflecting on how much less deadly it would seem with just a drop of yellow swimming up his veins, but when the door burst open he didn’t hesitate to let go.

  * * *

  Gilchrist had watched the casket plummet, watched it smash down through the waves and disappear. He wasn’t sure if the cartographer had seen it. The old man was only half-lucid, and his blankets were smeared red. Gilchrist peered up at the overhang. The sea was dark and the sloop was small, but they were not invisible.

  Then two figures dropped down, one arrow-straight, the other flailing spidery limbs in a way Gilchrist knew well, only streamlining an instant before impact. Gilchrist leaned on the tiller. The wind was surging again, carrying the sloop on course.

  He kept his eyes fixed on the splashes as he sliced closer. The cartographer’s head was up again, trying to speak through phlegm. Gilchrist unwound rope, twisted it through the chunk of carved driftwood, and cast towards the approaching swimmers.

  Crane came up over the side first, spitting seawater. “Good evening, Gilchrist,” he gurgled. “I see you received my message.”

  Next came a lean man, sun-darkened, who collapsed into the bottom of the boat and stared up at the saturnine sky as if he’d never seen it before. Gilchrist looked across to Crane.

  “Our cartographer withheld a few small details,” Crane said, gingerly probing where the saltwater had found his wounds. “For instance, the fact that there was one other survivor of the wreck. A cabin boy.”

  Gilchrist looked at the escapee and realized. “The angel.”

  “More of a demon, in my brief experience.” Crane shook water from his ear. “Quite capable with a shiv. You’d like him.”

  “Boy?” The word was rasped. “Durden?”

  The cartographer had struggled upright, now clutching at the side of the sloop and staring, open-mouthed. Gilchrist and Crane watched as Durden crawled forward, equal measure of shock scrawled on his face. The cartographer’s eyes were glistening wet. His tattooed hands wrapped around Durden’s head. The wind was dying down.

  “Hoped you’d survived, hoped and dreamed,” the cartographer mumbled, and whatever he’d planned to say next was lost in spasm. Durden steadied him as he coughed and coughed.

  Crane’s eyes fell on the rucksack at the same time Gilchrist reached for it and pulled out the remaining medicine.

  “Enough for the deep sleep, isn’t it?” Gilchrist asked quietly.

  “As it is, I imagine he’ll be gone in a matter of hours, Gilchrist,” Crane evaded, scratching his arm. “One does hate to waste.”

  “Crane.”

  Crane grimaced. He filled the syringe to the very top and reluctantly handed it across. Gilchrist stepped to where Durden and the old man were still wrapped together in the stern. The cough was shaking the cartographer’s whole body now.

  “When he’s ready,” Gilchrist said, holding out the syringe. Durden eyed it, then took it from his grasp, nodding just once. The cartographer looked blearily upward. Gilchrist gave him a shoddy seaman’s salute and returned to where Crane was tracing the stripes on his back with pale fingers.

  “I assume you’ve reached the same conclusion I have.”

  “There was no map.”

  “No,” Crane agreed. “There was only an old man arriving at life’s denouement carrying considerable guilt.”

  Gilchrist cocked his head in Durden’s direction. “He’ll want to go back to Brask?”

  “I would assume so, yes.” Crane was considering the gleaming yellow dregs trickling down the inside of the vial, tipping it back and forth.

  “We’ll have a long stretch at sea,” Gilchrist said. “Enough time to c
lean you out, if you don’t buy at port.”

  Crane stopped. “I won’t be pleasant, Gilchrist.”

  “You never have been.”

  “Ha.” Crane cracked a smile, and hesitated for only a moment before he flicked the vial off into the water. The blackness swallowed it instantly.

  Up above them, the clouds were moving off, and hot white pinpricks of light were appearing in the firmament. It was a few minutes on that Gilchrist realized the cartographer had finally gone still. The sloop was cutting a steady clip, and Purgatory was beginning to recede behind them. Durden released the old man’s arm, still silent, and stood to peel off his sopping clothes.

  “It is a shame about the map,” Crane said, pensive. “I had such high hopes.”

  “Unfortunate,” Gilchrist agreed, and then paused.

  Durden had cast off his shirt, and in the starlight Gilchrist saw that the man’s back had been skillfully tattooed with a jet black sea creature, its tentacles stretching across his skin, winding in and out and in and out. As he watched, narrow lines of luminescence bloomed against the black. Glowing the same eerie blue as Purgatory’s algae-smeared walls, they snaked across Durden’s shoulder blades and swirled up his spine, charting the way through pitch-dark Coves to the cartographer’s sunken ship.

  Copyright © 2015 Rich Larson

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  Rich Larson was born in West Africa, has studied in Rhode Island and worked in Spain, and at twenty-three now writes from Edmonton, Alberta. His short fiction has been nominated for the Sturgeon Award and appears in multiple Year’s Best anthologies, as well as in magazines such as Asmiov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, F&SF, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, and multiple times previously in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Find him at richwlarson.tumblr.com..

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  The Interrogation of Terago Headman of Myte, 5—

  He had worn hands and a scar across his cheek, so I knew he was no ordinary priest, and I trust the hands I can see. With a silver pincer, he pulled the chittle from deep within my Nilla’s ear, its wings twittering once they emerged from the canal. She shook in his grasp, eyes still milky, but he was calm, robes filthy but hands clean. Beside him on a stool were his instruments. No book. No black fire pistol. The wings buzzed with fury at being removed from where the creature would have laid its eggs inside my daughter, but Heriz, for it was indeed the man you claim, pressed the creature into a jar, drowning it in honey, like the old Hesher women said Lagro drowned the sun at night to give us the night to rest. My Nilla shook, and he hushed her. “Almost done, sleepy star,” he said, in Macti. “Be brave a little longer.”