The Thieves of Nottica

by Ash Gray

  “. . . the crime of letting a sewage pipe burst! May other foul and soulless demons learn from your trespasses!” shouted the Crow reading the parchment and let the parchment snap, rolling shut. As soon as he was finished reading, the Crow at the opposite end of the scaffolding yanked a lever. Rigg turned away just in time as the three bodies swung, but the sound of their necks snapping rang nonetheless in her ears.

  When Rigg made it back to the boarding house, Hari and Morganith still hadn’t returned, but Lisa was sitting on the edge of the bed as before, staring into space as she waited for Rigg. The moment she saw Rigg, she hopped off the bed and ran to her.

  “You are alive!” Lisa breathed happily. She frowned. “And you are shaking.”

  Rigg didn’t answer as the image of the three swinging bodies flashed once across her eyes. She moved past Lisa like one haunted, taking off her coat.

  “What is the matter?” Lisa asked behind her.

  Rigg threw her coat on the bed and sat. “Nothin’,” she lied. She smiled. “Come see what I brought ya.”

  Lisa came to the bed and sat on the end beside Rigg. She watched with large, happy eyes as Rigg pulled out a handful of sensory chips. Rigg let the chips tumble into Lisa’s waiting hands, and Lisa cradled them like a precious treasure. Her eyes went from the chips to Rigg’s face and back again. “Where did you get these?” she breathed.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Rigg, rolling back her shirt sleeves. “I can install them, and you can taste this.” She lifted the lollipop and unwrapped it, slowly revealing its swirling riot of color.

  Fascinated, Lisa let the sensory chips fall on the bed and slowly took the lollipop from Rigg, who was watching her with soft eyes. “I never tasted . . . anything before,” Lisa whispered.

  Rigg frowned. “So what happens if you eat stuff?” she wondered. She gestured for Lisa to turn around.

  Happily clutching the lollipop to her breasts, Lisa turned her back to Rigg and bowed her head. “I don’t know,” she whispered as Rigg gently pushed her hair aside. “One time I accidentally swallowed water, and it came out between my legs.”

  Rigg laughed softly at Lisa’s deadpan joke, but she halted when she noticed the back of Lisa’s neck: the factory number had been shaved away, roughly and angrily. Frowning in confusion, Rigg gently rubbed her fingers over the scrape, and Lisa flinched as if it hurt.

  “I-I filed it off while you were gone,” Lisa admitted in whisper. “So that no one could have power over me ever again. Daisy helped me. Her number is filed away too.”

  “If someone saw this, you could be scrapped,” Rigg said anxiously.

  “I know,” was the soft reply. “I believe freedom is worth that risk.”

  Rigg pushed her sleeves back again, and after hesitating, carefully started unbuttoning the back of Lisa’s dress. As Lisa’s smooth, flawless brown skin was slowly revealed, Rigg’s hands began to shake, and she realized she was terrified of hurting her. There was a small door embedded in Lisa’s back, held shut by small flesh-colored screws. Rigg’s hand morphed into a screwdriver, and after swallowing hard, she gently started to unscrew, the screws coming loose with a whirling sound that pierced the tense silence.

  Lisa kept her head down, clutching her dress to her naked breasts. The lollipop was still in her fingers, and she was trembling slightly as Rigg worked, breathing shaky breaths.

  “Tell me about Daisy,” Rigg said, hoping to distract Lisa from what she was doing. “I didn’t see her or Madame downstairs.”

  “They are in Madame’s bedroom,” Lisa answered. “Daisy and Madame are lovers. Daisy willingly sales her services and Madame runs the boarding house. They have been doing things this way for many years, since Madame was very young. By all rights, they would be married and would jointly own the boarding house if Daisy were a human man.” Lisa whispered in a small voice, “But she is not.”

  The last screw fell out, and Rigg opened Lisa’s back to be greeted by wires, gears, and gadgets. In the center of the wires sat a beautiful golden compass with a sharp copper arrow. Rigg smiled: the compass was Lisa’s heart. Its golden chain twisted and twined around a long tube that ran from Lisa’s neck to a soft sack connected to many other tubes: Lisa’s artificial esophagus, belly, and intestines. She even had artificial lungs, which sucked in and out like a fireplace bellows the shakier her breaths. A circuit board danced with light, and Rigg could see the empty sockets where different sensory chips could go. Lisa likely had an identical circuit board in her head, but the chips could be put anywhere, like a television with multiple cord sockets. Rigg picked the sensory chip for taste from the pile on her coat, and with a shaking hand, carefully inserted it.

  “How’s that feel?” Rigg whispered.

  Lisa didn’t answer.

  “Lisa?” Rigg called anxiously.

  “I . . . do not know,” Lisa said uncertainly. “When I licked the lollipop, it tasted the way fire smells.”

  Rigg laughed weakly. “Oh geez. I brought you a lollipop that’s covered in dust. God, I’m so sorry . . .” Shaking her head in self-admonishment, she closed Lisa’s back panel and started replacing each screw. Lisa sat up a little straighter, thrusting her breasts as the screws were put in, and Rigg noticed her breath was shaky again. “Does it hurt when I screw you?” she asked. She winced at her own words. “No! I mean . . . dammit.”

  Lisa laughed softly. “No,” she whispered, “. . . it feels good.”

  Rigg’s heart leapt. It had never occurred to her that replacing some screws could cause a robot physical pleasure. She closed Lisa’s back panel and gently smoothed her hands over her skin. It felt warm and soft and so much like organic skin, she was astonished.

  With a little smile, Lisa reached back and guided Rigg into holding her from behind. Rigg hesitated and closed her arms around Lisa. She was small and warm in her embrace, and looking down, she realized Lisa had dropped her dress away: her high, naked breasts rose and fell gently above Rigg’s enfolding arms.

  “You’re so pretty, Lisa,” Rigg whispered helplessly. “We s-shouldn’t. The others could come back --”

  “But it is my birthday,” Lisa teased.

  “I could run out and get you ah better lollipop. One that isn’t a century old,” Rigg insisted, feeling more nervous by the minute. She made a move to get up, but Lisa caught her arm. She smiled, looking up at Rigg with soft, admiring eyes, then her dark lashes swept down. She looked at Rigg’s lips and kissed her tenderly. Their lips slowly peeled apart, and Rigg’s heart was thudding in her ears when Lisa’s lips brushed against hers in a whisper, “I want to taste you.”

  ***

  Rigg awoke some time later with Lisa snuggled in her arm, watching her with adoring golden eyes. She smiled and stroked Lisa’s thick black hair, which stood in messy curls around her beaming face. The sun had gone down, and the room was gloomy, lit only by the yellow city lights that streamed through the window. Rigg knew Hari and Morganith could be back any minute and willed herself to get up.

  “We better get dressed,” Rigg said but didn’t move.

  “Yeah,” agreed Lisa dreamily but didn’t move either.

  They smiled contently at each other, then Lisa gave Rigg a sudden smacking kiss on the nose that made them both laugh. Rigg tickled Lisa under the sheets, and they twisted playfully against each other, giggling breathlessly a moment before settling into the sheets again, blissfully tired and content.

  Rigg looked at the ceiling, savoring every sweet kiss, every sweet sigh that had wrung from Lisa’s soft lips that afternoon. It was intimacy like Rigg had never dreamed. She could still see Lisa in her mind’s eye, her gasping face wreathed in the nest of her black curls, her high breasts rolling gently as Rigg moved on top of her, rubbing their warm sexes together in a pulsing ecstasy that erupted in trembling, moist pleasure. Lisa’s body was fully anatomically correct . . . fully. Rigg wasn’t sure what she’d expected to find when she reached between Lisa’s thighs, but she was extremely happy with what she
found.

  “I enjoyed that immensely,” Lisa said into the silence. “It was the first time I ever enjoyed a physical encounter.”

  Rigg frowned. “You never been with anyone but the Evrard? Not even another man?”

  “Yes,” Lisa said quietly, and Rigg looked at her in surprise.

  “An automaton was purchased by the Golds as a gardener,” Lisa said factually. “He was a unit modeled to look like a young human man. He expressed desire for me, and I consented out of curiosity.”

  “Curiosity? Not because you wanted to?”

  “I have never wanted to do anything with a man,” Lisa said simply.

  Rigg smiled at the ceiling. “So you’re full-on strange.”

  “Strange?”

  “Nothin’. It’s ah slang word for people who like people of the same sex.”

  “Straight” was a human term which referred to those attracted to others of the opposite sex, while “strange” was yet another human term referring to any person who was attracted to those of the same sex. Demons themselves had no labels for sexuality, as all of it was simply viewed as physical expression and little more.

  “Are you full-on strange?” Lisa asked, as if she sensed Rigg was not.

  “No,” Rigg said. “I’ve been with men and I’ve liked it.”

  “Oh. I was not aware organics were so versatile.”

  Rigg laughed at Lisa’s calm and bewildered acceptance. “That’s the first time someone put it that way. Most of the time, when people find out I’m only ‘half-strange,’ they follow up with some insult. So what happened to the gardener? I’m almost scared ta ask.”

  “Evrard discovered what we had done and had him dismantled.”

  Rigg sighed. “I knew it.”

  “Then, suspecting I cared for the unit, he put the boy’s head on display and made me stare at it for a complete night.”

  “Geez,” Rigg muttered. “And what’s crazy is that you didn’t even enjoy the sex.”

  “No,” Lisa admitted, “but the boy was still my friend.” Her face darkened with sadness and anger, and Rigg rubbed her shoulder.

  Lisa looked at Rigg anxiously. “Was my performance satisfactory?”

  “Mmm, why wouldn’t it be?” moaned Rigg dreamily. “That thing you did . . . when your hand vibrated . . .” She stared at the ceiling, wide-eyed and smiling as she remembered.

  Lisa’s eyes crinkled up in girlish delight. “I am glad you were sufficiently pleased. Will we do this again?”

  “And again and again,” Rigg confirmed, smoothing her hand up the soft, warm skin of Lisa’s back. She looked at Lisa’s lips and kissed her. They smiled at each other, and Lisa snuggled closer to Rigg, looking almost giddy.

  “I enjoy that you wore your natural face,” Lisa said softly.

  Rigg laughed dryly. “Why? You like my real face?”

  “Yes,” Lisa said with the usual blank honestly. She frowned. “Was that a sincere question? Or a scolding rhetorical question akin to Harilotecca’s speech patterns?”

  “Both?”

  “I do not love your face because it is beautiful,” Lisa said warmly, “but your face is beautiful because I love it.”

  Rigg smiled. “Well . . . even if I wanted to wear my own face all the time, I couldn’t. Not in public anyway. The Hand knows what my face looks like now.”

  “Yes,” Lisa said apologetically, as if it were somehow her doing. “Your images were captured on the castle’s surveillance as you fled. Evrard showed me the recording, so I could identify you when I saw you.”

  “Yeah,” Rigg said dully. “That whole job was bust. We all hadda bad feeling about it, but we did it anyway. Hey . . .” She glanced at Lisa. “You have any idea what was in that stupid lockbox? Be nice to know Arda didn’t die for Evrard’s childhood collection of bottle caps.”

  “I do not know,” Lisa answered apologetically. “I only know it was very precious to the Golds and it was alive.”

  Rigg looked at Lisa quickly. “Alive? But how could it survive inside the lockbox?”

  “I do not know,” Lisa repeated. “The Golds often spoke of it as if it were a person, a living being, existing in the box. They were very serious about their family heirlooms. They had an entire treasury room dedicated to them inside the family vault. It was not unlike a museum.”

  “Geez. Don’t tell me the box had some Gold’s ancient ashes in it. I carried that thing in my stomach.” Rigg gazed off, remembering: she had carried the lockbox in her second stomach as the Keymasters were escaping the castle.

  “No. As I said, whatever was kept in the lockbox was alive.” Lisa stared thoughtfully into space. “And it was very precious to the Golds. I remember the last time it was in jeopardy, Evrard’s mother had twelve demons and five automatons murdered to find it.”

  Rigg scowled.

  “You aren’t the first ones to have stolen it,” went on Lisa. “You are the first ones to have stolen it successfully.”

  Rigg laughed weakly. “And now look at us.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t go to Evrard,” Lisa said in a small voice. “Maybe you should just run away. We could ask your Kito to take us someplace far, someplace outside of Nottica.”

  “The Regime is everywhere, Lisa. I’m pretty sure they’ve got branches in other countries worse than the Hand.” Rigg laughed flatly. “Hard to imagine anyone worse than the Hand, though. At least in Azkia they don’t have cameras in the toilet.”

  “Maybe there’s a place the Regime hasn’t taken,” Lisa insisted. “Maybe there’s a hidden place out there somewhere, just waiting to be found. There has to be.”

  No, there doesn’t, Rigg thought unhappily, her wet, black eyes on the ceiling. She cleared her throat and said soothingly, “Yeah, Lisa. Maybe. Maybe you and I’ll find it.” She smiled. “Some island out on the edge of nowhere, where the mermaids are alive and well, and the ocean is blue, and the jungles are thriving. We could live there in peace,” she glanced at Lisa, smiling, “and no one would know about us. No one could touch us.”

  Lisa smiled dreamily into Rigg’s eyes. “I’d cook you meals.”

  “I’d sew you dresses,” Rigg returned, hugging Lisa tight in her arm.

  Lisa laughed. “You sew?”

  “Yeah,” Rigg admitted, laughing as well. “That hard to believe? Hadda learn ta sew my own things in the orphanage. I was damn good at it too.” She whispered warmly in Lisa’s ear, “I’d sew you such pretty dresses.” Her lips gently caressed Lisa’s warm, smooth skin in a brief kiss, and Lisa smiled.

  “We’d adopt baby dinosaurs,” Lisa said wistfully. “Six of them.”

  Rigg laughed. “I’m too young to be ah mom.”

  “Well, maybe after we’d been there a few years,” Lisa said. She snuggled closer to Rigg and whispered, “Let’s go there now.”

  Rigg held Lisa tighter: if only that were possible.

  “When do you think the others will be back?” Lisa wondered. She laughed softly. “I never want to get up again.”

  “We’ve probably got plenty of time,” Rigg answered. “It usually takes long to make negotiations, mostly cuz Morganith and Kito never get along much. If they don’t come back in another hour, then that means they’re in trouble and we should go bail them out. Back when . . . Arda was alive . . .” Rigg swallowed hard, “we’d always split the team in two when we needed to meet a contact. That way, if we were walkin’ into a trap, two of us could always sweep in an’ rescue. After Arda died, though, we got scared. Started stickin’ together.” Rigg stared at the ceiling.

  “. . . what was Arda like?” Lisa whispered. “The three of you never talk about her.”

  “Because it’s painful, Lise,” Rigg said, trying and failing to keep the scolding from her voice.

  “Oh. I am sorry,” Lisa whispered.

  Rigg rubbed Lisa’s back. “No, it’s alright.” She frowned. “Ain’t you never lost no body?”

  It was Lisa’s turn to frown. “I am confused by your use of double
negatives.”

  “Well, I meant . . .”

  Lisa smiled. “I am joking.”

  Rigg sighed. “Right.” She glanced at Lisa, who was watching her with mischievous golden eyes, and she tightened her arm around her and shook her playfully, relishing in the girlish shrill of her giggles.

  “You never lost anyone, though?” Rigg asked seriously.

  “I never had anyone,” Lisa whispered.

  Rigg rubbed Lisa’s back to sooth her. “You’ve got someone now.”

  Lisa smiled.

  “So on your first birthday,” Rigg asked curiously, “the day you were first turned on and you first opened your eyes, what’s the first thing you remember?”

  Lisa blinked, staring into space as she recalled. “Evrard’s mother,” she said, voice dripping disdain. “Julia Everna Gold. She was a very cold, very hard woman. She had no interest in raising her own son – beyond the occasional lecture on the inferiority of demons – so she purchased me. For six thousand riggits. When she turned me on, the first thing I saw was her scowling face. Then her hand when she slapped me.”

  Rigg glowered. “Well,” she said darkly, “I guess most people are born with ah slap, just not in their face.”

  “She wanted to make certain I was functioning.”

  “By breakin’ you?” Rigg said in disgust.

  “The forte of the Golds was never logic,” Lisa returned.

  Rigg laughed dryly. “I see.”

  “I was standing in the nursery and Evrard was sleeping in the crib behind Julia,” Lisa went on. “She folded her hands and coldly explained that I was to care for her son, protect him and love him, to the detriment of all else. She had no desire to employ a nanny. Nannies cost money and could not be controlled. I was free labor. And I could be controlled.”

  “Geez. Don’t tell me she’s the one who named you.”

  Lisa smiled sadly. “I named myself, Rigg. Julia said it was a tradition in her family to let the ‘house bots’ name themselves. They thought it was delightfully funny whenever a robot chose the wrong gender name. When they purchased me, there was a male designated butler in the mansion named Jill.”