by Brindi Quinn
The air was fragrant, like that of the monumental conservatory in Eastern City. I brought it deeply into my lungs.
The wind was playful. It was a sylph. It tossed my hair, the grass, and the top of the water, letting all know of its presence. It fluttered the skirts of the women in the distance, turning the whole crowd into a ruffling blur of colorful, moving fabric.
Beside me, stood a man with a black and white striped top hat and a curling mustache. The sight of him made me unusually excited.
The mustached man!
No, this one was thinner. Thin enough to be a pole, and his hat was thin, too. The longer I watched it, the higher it stretched and the taller its stripes grew.
“What’s going on?” My words were wispy. They floated away before they were fully out.
Conversely, the mustached man, who wasn’t THE mustached man, had a voice that was fierce: “Almost time!”
“Time for wha–”
A shadow cast over my face, as over the side of the ship, a large creature swooped. The force of its presence pushed the boat sideways, causing a few of the women onboard to squeal and cling to their bonnets. Such was the folly of bonnets. All around the valley, the crowd cheered in response. The creature, I saw, was a whale. It swam through the air, splashing wind here and there with its massive tail.
“Look closer,” the mustached man whispered. As I watched the whale swoop again, it slowly transformed into something else. It was a blimp. It was a massive whale-shaped balloon.
“Three! Two! One!” The mustached man cried a countdown and–
POW! A shooting of glitter erupted from the fake whale’s blowhole.
Everything was drowned by the cheers of the valley. Fine glitter fell over my face; got caught in my lashes.
I closed my eyes and a new voice spoke:
“Welcome to Paradise, Zillow Stone.”
I knew that voice.
“Yes,” I murmured. “My Marker.”
When I opened my eyes again, a beeper was going off and I was hugging my body in sleep.
“Your preset time of 7 Hours has exhausted, Zillow Stone. Please scan your mark to add additional chamber time.” The message repeated itself twice before I rolled from the pod.
Chapter 5: Hunter and Prey and Loomer
True to its promise, the sleep had been restful, and my body no longer ached in the way it had when I’d entered the waystation. The whale, mustached man number two, and the explosion of glitter quickly began to fade in my mind. I wasn’t one for dreaming. Very rarely did I wake with made-up memories. I shook my head to shake the last of them away, then slipped into the watering hole a second time before going to locate Theo.
I found him in the vendor room looking much cleaner than I’d left him.
“Feeling better?” he asked, bright-eyed.
I was about to tell him yes when I noticed that the vendor screen before him – the one that sold gambits – was flashing in a strange way, and pixelated words sported a warning message: The Grav-100 will cost 5000 safe points. Are you sure you wish to proceed?
“5000!?” I looked from the flashing screen to Theo. “There are gambits that expensive?”
Theo’s expression turned strange. “It’s one of the most expensive,” he said with slight trepidation.
“But that’ll be most of your SPs.” I considered how obvious the statement was. “Er– what does it do?”
“T-tell you later!” Theo’s answer was off-key. “I-I don’t want to waste any more rest time here, you know? Are you about ready, then?” With a fidgety rub to the back of his head, he stepped between the vendor and me. “Eh-heh. Meet you outside?”
I gave him a suspicion-filled nod that seemed to satisfy him, and he turned his back to me and tended once more to the machine.
With that, I turned on toe and headed toward the entrance to the waystation. I wasn’t about to let it go, of course. My partner’s behavior was enough to spark anyone’s intuition. Might as well have sent off distress flares into the air and proclaimed, ‘I’M HIDING SOMETHING!’ Instantly, I began to sift through the brochure of gambit information I’d taken on my first visit to Zelpha. 5000 SPs was a hefty price to pay for anything, let alone any one thing. Surely there were more important things, namely food and weapons and clothing. My reckless partner didn’t strike me as the sort to make wise consumer decisions, and judging by his shifty behavior, I didn’t believe he’d offer me the gambit’s definition anytime soon. I ran my finger over the list of gambit abbreviations before settling on Grav-100.
Reading the definition, I cocked my head. “Once activated, the gravity gambit forces a Marker to come to its target. The Marker must then stay within a deca-tetramark radius of its target for two hours, or suffer the penalty.” I looked up from the pamphlet. “Two hours?”
Enough time to determine a winner.
Essentially, the Grav-100 was a way for a prag to declare war on its Marker. It was a way to force an end to the game.
I returned the gambit booklet to its resting place and waited for Theo. Come to think of it, my partner’s tracker hadn’t gone off since I’d met him – at least, not that I knew of. Supposedly they went off once a day or so naturally. Mine had gone off several times, yet his . . .
Was that why he’d purchased the Grav-100? He was hoping to force a showdown with his Marker?
Overhead, the sky was a kind of gray, stained subtly with hints of morning. I stared into it. The interaction with my Marker had left me confused. Humiliated, too.
Welcome to Paradise, Zillow Stone.
That dream hadn’t done much to help. But it wasn’t productive to think about that. Instead, I’d concentrate on the bizarre nature of the one pursuing me.
He was out there somewhere, under these earliest moments of day. If my mark turned red again, would he come to kill me?
Or would he only come to manipulate me?
At that, my throat made an uncooperative growl. If I knew one thing for sure, it was that I refused to be his, or anyone’s, plaything. The next time I saw him, I’d let him know: I wasn’t one to be taken lightly. He wouldn’t best me again. He wouldn’t be given the chance. My blade would find his softest parts and–
“Hey-ho, partner! Ready to hit the– whoa! Why so tense!?”
I didn’t realize how tightly my fists were balled until Theo’s voice broke over the booming soundtrack of Zelpha.
I let them loosen, though my teeth remained tight.
“What now?” I said. “Where are we headed?”
Even to myself, I sounded stiff and unpleasant.
Theo eyed me up and down. “Dang. Someone’s cranky. Thought you caught up on your z’s in there, Zillmeister.”
I eyed him back, thinking of the Grav gambit now within his leather binder, though I chose not to press him about it. There were things he was keeping to himself, and I had better things to worry about. It was time for the large-eyed boy to share with me all he’d learned in the wasteland.
“Where are we headed?” I asked again. “Back to the waterwheel?”
Theo shook his head resolutely. “Nope. That way.” He pointed into the west.
“What’s that way?”
Smiling brightly, Theo wiggled his eyebrows up and down. “You’ll see.”
His brightness made me even cloudier. I wasn’t in the mood for games, and I let him know so with a begrudging grumble as I hoisted my backpack and started off in the direction he’d chosen.
My sleep had been restful, but I was far from at peace. I felt fouler now than ever that Crash had invaded my sleep.
But maybe it was unavoidable.
With an epiphany, I twirled to face Theo. “Does the gas in the sleep pods make you dream?”
Theo’s ears perked. “Not that I know of. Why?”
Not the answer I’d been hoping for.
“Never mind.”
Foulness returned to every inch of my being.
Thud. Thud.
As day broke, the dust of th
e ground broke too, with each step away from the sanctuary of Waystation Zelpha. It faded into the distance, the further we trekked, and once we could no longer hear the echoes of trance-like music set to lights, I picked up another sound – faint shouting on the horizon ahead.
I held up a hand to break Theo, but Theo had already stopped and was straining his ears. “Sounds like someone’s in a scuffle,” he muttered.
Although I couldn’t distinguish the words, a series of frantic cries was coming from across the desiccated plains. Moments later, a figure came into view, steadily moving towards us, sprinting in the direction of the waystation. My first instinct was to dart behind something, a large piece of wasteland debris or an upturned boulder, to avoid detection. But there was nothing of the sort – no place to hide and no time to react. Dumbly, we stood, hands to hilts, as a brawny brunette girl raced at us holding a sort of club.
Instinct took over. My hand was already at the shaft of my weapon before I willed it to. I was just beginning to pull the gleaming thing from its resting place when I saw the flash of red on the girl’s hand.
She was like us.
“Out of my way!”
And she was past us in a flash.
Where there was a prag running, a Marker was sure to be close behind. With that in mind, I finished drawing my katar, paying no attention to the girl now at our backs. If a Western demon was in our midst, there was little else to do but prepare.
But Theo didn’t feel the same. He wasn’t worried at all, apparently. “Don’t bother,” he said, waving at the air. “Another prag’s Marker has approximately zero business with us.”
I wasn’t convinced. Theo noticed.
“Look, Zillusion. I’ve been out here for months. I’ve seen more than my fair share of Markers. You don’t have to worry about a single one but your own.”
So he said, but I couldn’t help noticing the way his voice wavered at the end.
Still, he was right. Not a minute later, a second figure appeared on the horizon, this one a chiseled boy with yellow hair and tattooed triangles under his eyes. They were just like my Marker’s tattoos – like Crash’s. How convenient that all unholy ones were branded the same. The Marker was holding one of the indicator pens out before him like a compass, which was glowing red to match its prey.
As he came upon us, he locked eyes with me and crooned: “Move it or lose it, sugar tits!” But when he saw the way my katar twitched, he amended, “I was talking to him, obviously; not you, doll,” and nodded toward Theo, clearly the less threatening choice.
And that was that. The yellow-haired Marker disappeared after his prag and the girl’s cries disappeared into the distance.
Something dawned on me then.
The yellow-haired Marker was like the Marker I’d first encountered after leaving Eastern City. She hadn’t bothered to fight me either. She’d even helped me, by pointing me to the glowing messages left by other prags. That meant that Theodorius, and all his nonchalance, was right; Markers had little reason to trifle with the prags of others. This wasn’t a war.
Then again, it had never claimed to be.
In the yellow-haired Marker’s absence, Theo stretched his arms behind his head. “See?” he said. “What did I tell you?” I ignored him, and instead stared off after hunter and prey, wondering if we should have intervened. Theo read my mind. “She’ll reach the waystation before he catches up to her. Besides, he didn’t look in the killing mood, did he?” he said.
Did he? Who could tell? The demons of Western City weren’t like us.
I shrugged.
“Hrm. Didn’t take you for a vigilante type, Zill. Seems to me you’re more self-centered than that.”
I wasn’t offended. And he was right. I cared about myself more than that stranger. Leaving the pair to their own demise, I turned again to the west. “Let’s go . . . sugar tits.”
Theo put up a fuss, and assured me that the remark had been intended for me from the get go. I knew this, of course, but there was a certain amusement to tormenting him. I felt my mouth turn up in the corner. Maybe I liked punishing him for keeping things from me.
“Are you ready to tell me where we’re going yet?” I asked.
Perhaps Theo had also seen my katar twitch, for he was much more cooperative this time around. “Not where,” he said. “Who.”
“Who we’re going?” I rephrased.
He rolled his eyes. “You get what I mean. Quit being so snippy.” He cleared his throat. “WE, my Zillentine, are off to meet with a dear, dear friend of mine, one by the name of Kipper.”
“The one with a smug smirk and a fat face?” As he’d said after leaving the sunken plant.
Theo cleared his throat again, making no attempt to deny it. “I’m upholding my end of the bargain, here, Zillow Stone. Prepare to learn something new!” With that, he took his bag from his shoulder and began fishing about in the frontmost pocket. The bag was dirt-worn and sun-stained, much like Theo himself. After a moment, he removed a small, silver ball, one no larger than a plum. “This,” he said, brightly, “is a loomer.”
“A loomer?”
“That’s right! An extraordinary, rare, and useful thing! One of these puppies costs a hefty sum of SPs, AND they can only be found at a select few waystations. Thyronnia – way north of here – and Edon, which is really far west.”
Thyronnia and Edon – I’d be sure to record them on my map later.
Theo plopped the ball into my palm. It was dense for its size, much denser than a plum. “What does it do?” I asked.
“I’ll show you.” After allowing me to study it a moment, Theo took the ball between his thumb and index finger. “There’s a button on each side of it. For starters, you press them both in at once.” He demonstrated as he spoke, and the loomer made a series of tiny computing sounds in response. Correspondingly, a sliver of blue light ignited around its circumference.
It was a machine, a small and meticulous device.
“It’s revving up,” Theo explained. There was a clicking noise, followed by a hitching sound, and lastly, a miniature triangle extended from the face of the ball. With the triangle in place, the contraption resembled a bird, all of a sudden. If the ball were its body, the triangle was its beak. “Kinda cute, isn’t it?” said Theo.
I squinted at it. Cute or not, I was more interested in the practical uses of such a machine.
The belly of the bird gave one loud beep.
“DELIVER TO KIPPER EISENHOWER,” Theo spoke into it loudly.
The loomer beeped again.
So Theo started again: “MESSAGE: Kipper, it’s Theo. I’m heading to Plot 2 tonight. Meet me there by tomorrow morning and I’ll make it worth your while . . . and don’t even THINK about running off with this loomer. I’ll beat your ass, man. Not even kidding. END.”
This time, the loomer beeped twice before replaying the message Theo had just recorded. Once it was finished, Theo nodded and said, “CONFIRM.”
From within, the ball made a second string of processing noises. There was another loud click and a small panel on the bottomside of the ball opened up, letting out a bluish substance. The substance was something like fog, or light, or a mixture of the two. The beam was denser – thicker than regular light, though, and it seemed to linger beneath the ball, taking on a discular shape. The consistency reminded me of a holoprojection, like the grainy ones found in the old movie-houses of the lower district that we’d gone to see as children.
I squinted at it. “How . . .?”
“Now’s the fun part.” Theo released the bird and it hovered in the blue light, before– ZING! It zipped away like a bullet.
Theo brushed his hands together. “There you have it! Our very own message delivery system. Pretty rad, right?”
I wouldn’t have put it that way, but– “Yes. How does it fly, though?”
“I don’t know.” Theo shrugged. “Magnets or something.”
No, it wasn’t magnets, but there was no use discussing it with
someone like Theodorius. I’d ask Peck, if I ever saw him again.
“I seriously recommend buying one when you get a chance. That one’s my second. The first got stolen by this asshole who’s probably dead by now anyway.” Theo returned his bag to his shoulder with a heave. “That’s the one downfall of the system. You’ve got to trust that whoever you send it to will give it back. You also have to know the full registered name of the person you’re sending it to. The loomers are linked in with the waystations, so whatever name they announce at the waystations is the name you’ve got to send it to. Loomers won’t recognize nicknames or aliases or anything like that.”
Noted.
“Well, what do you think, Ziller?” All of a sudden, Theo was in my face, eyes round and probing. “Useful. Knowledge. Shared. All good things, am I right?”
Yes, it was all useful knowledge, though I didn’t expect to be in the outlands long enough to utilize it.
But because Theo’s eyes were too eager for dismissal, and because something about their softness or their deepness made me look at them just a little longer than usual, I gave him a, “Thanks, Theo,” before stepping around him completely.
He grinned. “What are partners for?”
They were for sharing information. He’d said so himself. “What’s at Plot 2?” I asked.
Theo grinned deeper. “You’ll see.”
Chapter 6: Rivals
Plot 2 was nothing more than a tall post with a scrap of browned fabric at the very top – the remains of a flag, I guessed. The one called Kipper was a tall, thin boy with a space between his front teeth. When we came upon him in the early evening, he was leaning against the pole with his arms crossed over his head, staring up at the fabric scrap as it twiddled in the wind.
“Kipster!” Theo crowed a greeting that seemed friendly enough, though there was something in the way he smiled afterwards that was reminiscent of a wolf – the kind drawn up in storybooks. Maybe Kipper sensed it too.
