Dark Kingdoms

by Richard Lee Byers

  Arcs of dazzling, crackling electricity leaped from the pavement and transfixed the spirit horse's body. The Phantasy shuddered, and the stench of burning flesh and hair filled the air. When the discharge stopped, Alexander collapsed.

  Panting reflexively, Fink grinned. "That'll teach you, you bastard." And he meant to finish teaching Valentine as well. He willed a pulse of psychic energy into his shoulder—the wound throbbed fiercely, but began to heal—and peered about to see where the dwarf had gone.

  As it turned out, he hadn't gone far. Half flayed and chilled to the core, he hadn't even managed to stand up. Instead, he was crawling spastically in the paralyzed Belinda's general direction, like some blind, soft creature one might find beneath a rock.

  Fink flexed his right arm, then clenched his fist. The movements hurt, but everything was working again. He scrambled after Valentine and grabbed him by the ankle.

  As he did, he realized his touch wasn't cold anymore. He'd expended the last of his charge of magick blasting Alexander. But it would be just as satisfying to destroy Valentine with pure brute force. He pulled the little man close, bit off the top half of an ear, and then started slamming his skull against the ground.

  "Let him go!" Belinda wailed.

  Fink ignored her.

  "I mean it!"

  The keelboatman stiffened his thumb to gouge Valentine's eye. Then a gun barked, and pain lanced through the side of his neck.

  He looked up at Belinda. Eyes squinched shut, she was clutching her flintlock pistol with both hands. After another moment, when she finally dared to look and see what she'd done, her mouth fell open, and she trembled.

  "Didn't think you had the nerve," said Fink, releasing Valentine and dragging himself to his feet. "And you're going to wish I was right." He pulled the ax off his back and started forward.

  Valentine croaked, "Run!"

  But the hippie stood and gaped at Fink's approach, her finger repeatedly, probably unconsciously squeezing the trigger of her empty single-shot pistol. The big man whirled the ax above his head.

  A fresh surge of pain from his wounds washed away his strength and his balance together, and he fell heavily. The ax slipped from his fingers and clattered on the pavement.

  "Move!" cried Valentine. "Help me!"

  This time, Belinda heeded him. She stuffed the flintlock back into her rainbow- colored sash, dashed to the dwarf, picked him up, and clutched him against her chest like a baby. Staggering under the weight of her burden, she fled up the street.

  "No!" snarled Fink. They were not going to escape. He hauled himself to his knees and fumbled out the Mag-10.

  When he tried to sight down the barrel, he could have screamed in frustration, because his eyes played tricks on him. One moment, he saw two women stumbling away. The next, the whole shadowy, moonlit street melted into a gray blur.

  "Come on," he whispered, "come on!" As if in response to his entreaty, his vision began to clear. Murkily he saw Alexander roll to his feet and limp toward Belinda. The stallion had burned black patches on his shining white hide, and one eye was a duller red than the other, as if the lightning had charred it blind.

  Grunting, the hippie lifted Valentine onto Alexander's back, where he clutched at the Phantasy's mane. Then she tried to scramble up behind him, a task rendered difficult by her small stature.

  Still, frantic as she was, she was going to make it onto the horse any second. Fink couldn't wait for his eyes to focus completely, or for the throbbing in his wounds to go away. He aimed at Alexander's withers—with luck, the expanding cloud of shot would hit the stallion and both his would-be passengers, too—and squeezed the trigger.

  When the Roadblocker roared, his targets jerked. Valentine nearly tumbled off the spirit horse's back. But nobody went down. To Fink's disgust, he'd missed them altogether.

  He fired the second of his three rounds. Missed again. Belinda finally managed to jump onto Alexander's back. Instantly, the wounded stallion lurched into motion, galloping at only a fraction of his normal speed, but running nonetheless.

  Forcing himself to take his time, Fink sighted in on the moving target. He had it, was leading it just by a hair, squeezed the trigger. And at that precise instant, Alexander plunged into the mouth of an alley and disappeared. The Mag-10 boomed and kicked Fink's shoulder, uselessly.

  A number of his irregulars ran up to him. He wondered why they'd held back until now, then realized they'd probably started toward him the moment the trouble began. It was just that the whole fight had taken less than a minute.

  "Are you all right, Captain?" a mercenary in the back of the crowd asked hesitantly.

  "Course I am," Fink snarled, struggling to his feet. Someone tried to help him and he shoved the fool away.

  For an instant he contemplated telling Gayoso about Valentine's lies and treachery, but discarded the notion at once. It was common for Hierarchs to plot against one another as they competed for power and advancement. Rumor had it that each of the three Governors and even the Deathlords themselves aspired to depose their fellows. Thus, Gayoso might not consider that the jester had done anything wrong.

  And even if he would, Fink had his reputation to consider. He couldn't see telling anyone that the Salt River Roarer himself, the walking, talking legend who bragged that he could out-wrestle, out-shoot, out-lie, out-magick, out-sail, and out-fuck any ghost on the Mississipp, had had trouble disposing of a dwarf, a hippie girl, and a horse. It was bad enough that some of his troops had witnessed the fiasco.

  No, Fink decided, he'd handle Valentine himself, first time it was convenient. It would be more fun that way anyhow.

  Valentine bolted upright. The brassy allegro music sounded like mocking laughter, and now, suddenly, something was wrapped around his hands. He desperately fumbled them free of it, clutched blindly at the air before him, but failed to grab a single one of the Indian clubs. In an instant, they'd clatter on the stage.

  Something touched him on the shoulder. He screamed.

  Belinda jerked her hand back. "It's all right! It's only me! We got away."

  Valentine peered about. He wasn't in the Citadel after all. He was lying on a pallet in a grubby, sparsely furnished little room, dimly illuminated by the moonlight leaking past the window shade. The binding that had constrained his hands was a fringed buckskin vest that Belinda had evidently tossed over him. The music was rising through the floor.

  There was a second pallet across the room, this one surrounded by a rag doll, a rubber ball and jacks, and an Etch-a-Sketch. Starshine's toys, most likely.

  "You were hurt pretty bad," Belinda said. "You passed out on Alexander's back, and Slumbered."

  "Yeah," Valentine said. He realized he had the usual jangly feeling in his head to prove it. "I had a nightmare. I was a jester again, performing for Gayoso and Fink. And on the left side of the stage were the man in the blue mask, and Daphne. He had her strapped to a torture rack.

  "I can't juggle in real life, and I couldn't in the dream, either. Every time I dropped something, Gayoso made me pay a penalty. Either Fink would cut off one of my fingers, or the man in the blue hood would stick a darksteel dagger in Daphne. I had to choose which."

  The dwarf grimaced. "If Daphne got stabbed too many times, it would destroy her. But the more fingers I lost, the worse I was going to juggle. Until we got to a point where I couldn't do it at all, and had nothing left to slice off, and then that would be the end of her, too. I had to try to balance things out, and the nightmare went on and on. Or it felt like it, anyway."

  Belinda covered his hand with hers. "It must have been awful. But at least it's over now."

  "That's one way of looking at it. Or maybe I should think of it as a warm-up for the terrible things that probably really are going to happen to me. Where are we?"

  "My room upstairs in the Nightlight Theater. They let me keep it, even though I haven't worked on a show since Starshine disappeared." Her mouth twisted. "I think the owner wants to get into my pants."
<
br />   "You mean you haven't let him? You didn't think twice about putting out for a gun, so why not for a place to crash?"

  Belinda simply looked at him for a moment, then said, "I'm sorry you got hurt. But I didn't do it."

  Valentine's guts twisted. "I know. It's just that what Fink did to me was bad. Worse than anything anybody ever did before, before my death or since." He gingerly fingered his bitten ear, and found that the missing part had grown back. "Maybe we should get out of here. It's your own home, for Christ's sake. Fink wouldn't have any trouble finding us."

  Her eyes widened. "You're right. I was so rattled, I never thought."

  "How long was I out?"

  "I don't know. Several hours. It's nearly dawn."

  "Then don't panic. If he was hot on our trail, he would have gotten here by now. Maybe he's waiting for his own wounds to heal. Where's Alexander?"

  "In an empty garage across the street. He's going to be okay, too."

  "Good. We can ride him out of town."

  Belinda frowned. "What are you talking about?"

  "We pissed off Mike Fink. We have to run away." Which meant giving up both the security of a berth in the Citadel and the dignity of his new rank. For a moment, he hated her for luring him down this road.

  "Are you worried he'll tell Governor Gayoso that you tried to draw him into a treasonous plot? You didn't, not really, and in any case, it's our word against his. And you said that Gayoso hates Fink, from the days when he was a criminal and the Hierarchs couldn't catch him."

  "Still, it would be the word of a petty clerk and a vagrant from Under-the-Hill against that of the most valuable military leader in the province. However Gayoso feels inside, we couldn't count on him to come down on our side if it would mean an open break with a soldier who's important to the success of the crusade.

  "To tell you the truth, though, I'm not worried about Fink complaining to Gayoso. That's not his style. Most likely, he'll just come gunning for us himself. Although..."

  "What?" Belinda asked.

  Valentine shook his head. "Just that maybe I shouldn't try to guess what he'll do. I thought I knew the guy. I've heard all the stories. I've spent Fate knows how many nights in the Green Head, watching him party. But I'd never seen the man who jumped me tonight.

  "The difference wasn't that he was violent. Fink will slug or even shoot somebody at the drop of the hat. But he doesn't go berserk without some kind of a reason, and that's what happened down by the docks. One second we were talking, and the next, he just flipped out on us."

  "So you're saying that he might leave us alone?"

  The dwarf snorted. "Hell, no. I'm saying that whatever crazy thing is happening in Natchez, maybe it's finally got a hold on him. It's time to get out before, one way or another, it swallows us up, too."

  "What about Daphne and Starshine?"

  "Gone to the Void. Even if you won't admit it, you know it as well as I do." He gestured to the toys by the other pallet. "Your kid'll never play with that crap ever again."

  "You may be right," said Belinda flatly. "In that case, don't you want revenge?"

  "Give me a break. We tried, okay? Now it's time to look out for ourselves."

  "I thought you wanted to make amends for hurting your friend Montrose. To be loyal to Daphne."

  Valentine's eyes throbbed as if they could still shed tears. He twisted, averting his face from her. "That sounded pretty good, didn't it? The problem is that I'm not up to the job. When things turned nasty, you shot Fink. The fucking horse trampled him. All the dwarf could do was take whatever punishment was dished out, and then be carried off to safety like a piece of luggage."

  "If Fink had grabbed me first, I would have been helpless, too. What's that got to do with anything? We don't need a fighter—"

  "Don't be stupid. Obviously, if people are going to try to kill us, we do."

  "No, we need somebody smart—"

  "That's not me, either. My only ideas were to talk to Gayoso and then Fink, and look how great that worked out."

  "Somebody who knows his way around Natchez," Belinda continued doggedly, "and that's you. If you're going to run out on me, tell me what you'd do if you stayed. Then maybe I can do it in your place."

  "You need to get out of here yourself."

  "Just tell me, damn it!"

  "If I was reckless enough, I guess I could try to find a way to go through Gayoso's stuff like I did Montrose's," he said grudgingly. "Or spy on him in other ways."

  Belinda grimaced. "That plan won't work for me. I don't have the run of the Citadel. What else would you try?"

  "Hm." He frowned, mulling it over, until an idea popped into his head. But it was too dangerous, and thus, not worth sharing.

  "What?" Belinda asked. He guessed that some flicker of expression had alerted her that he'd thought of something.

  He sighed. "It's crazy. It would get us destroyed for sure. But I was just thinking that if we don't know how to find the man in the blue hood, maybe we could make Kim find us. With bait. Buy a kid from the slave market, have him wander around Under-the-Hill, and shadow him."

  Belinda frowned. "I don't know if I could own a child, let alone put one in danger, even to trap Starshine's kidnapper."

  "Well, I don't know if we could afford one anyway, prices being what they are. But we could hire a Masquer to make one of us look like a kid."

  The hippie's eyes widened. "That's pretty clever. Why do you say it would get us destroyed?"

  "Why do you think? Because we can't handle ourselves in a dangerous situation. We proved that tonight."

  "I think we proved the opposite. I shot someone. Deep down, I never thought I could, but I did."

  "Right. First you froze up for God knows how long, then you jerked off a lucky shot with your eyes closed, and after that, you froze again. You were like Dillinger in drag."

  She glared at him. "The point is, we're not helpless, and we shouldn't give in to fear."

  "You just haven't got a clue, have you? Pack up your stuff. We'll ride out after the sun comes up, and most people have gone indoors."

  "You go," she said. "I like your idea, and I'm going to try it."

  "It would be too risky even if somebody backed you up. You can't possibly pull it off alone."

  "We'll see," Belinda.

  I just killed her, Valentine thought, as sure as if I'd cut her head off. If the murderer doesn't get her, Fink or somebody else will. Why couldn't I keep my big mouth shut? In essence, it had been yet another betrayal, and he loathed her for drawing it out of him.

  "Fine," he said. "You do what you like. I'm out of here." He rose, crossed the room, and stepped through the surface of the door, feeling the pressure of her gaze between his shoulder blades.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The cabin cruiser cut through the dark water with a bobbing motion that made Astarte feel clumsy and unbalanced whenever she stood up. Off to the right—or to starboard, as Marilyn's pilot would put it—several oil tankers sat at anchor, their forms vague in the night. Above them on the riverbank loomed an oil refinery, fouling the air with a nasty smell.

  Seated beside Astarte on the foredeck, Marilyn gave a grunt of pain or effort, and then muttered, "Damn."

  "Are you hurting?" Astarte asked.

  "Absolutely," said the occultist, "but that's not why I'm sputtering curses. I was trying to accelerate my healing with magick, but nothing happened. You'd think that if I could revitalize a ghost queen, I could do as much for myself, wouldn't you?"

  "You gave Marie strength she didn't have before. It makes sense that if a person pulls energy out of himself and then puts it back, he doesn't gain anything."

  "That's very insightful," said Marilyn sourly, "but there ought to be a way around the problem. It's infinitely frustrating, knowing this newfound talent of mine could work miracles, reliably, every time, if only I understood the underlying principles. Since I joined the Arcanum, I've read Lord knows how many magickal texts, and some of what they teach tur
ns out to be valid, but it's obvious they merely scratch the surface."

  "At least you got to be part of the supernatural world," Astarte said, hating the resentful, whiny note in her voice but unable to hold her tongue. "Despite everything we've been through, I'm still stuck on the outside looking in."

  "You have a ghost for a lover. If that isn't intimacy with the supernatural, what is?"

  "It would feel a lot more intimate if we were on the same boat." She glowered at the expanse of water ahead. All she could see was a long, low barge floating downriver, but assumed that the Twisted Mirror was still steaming along in front of them.

  "Agent Bellamy comes aboard whenever he's ready to materialize," Marilyn said reasonably. "You can't expect him to spend all his time here, even when he's trapped in the Underworld. I imagine it's painful for him to hover around you when you can't see or hear him."

  "I guess," Astarte said. "But then he should let Titus bring me into his dimension again."

  "I'm sure he'd like to, but he's trying to protect you."

  "I don't want to be protected! I want to be with him, and to have what the rest of you have. To be back in the middle of the action. I don't want to know that magick and miracles are real, but just outside my reach."

  "I sympathize," the Arcanist said. "I spent years feeling exactly the same way. But as you say, I finally found my way into the heart of the mysteries, even if the path wasn't one I would have chosen. With patience and perseverance, perhaps you will, too."

  Astarte grimaced. "I'm not good at patience. Sometimes, when I'm hungry to touch Frank but can't stand the cold, or feel him dissolve out of my arms and back across the Shroud, I think, why the hell don't I just—" She realized she was saying more than she'd intended, and closed her mouth.

  "Why don't you what?" Marilyn asked.

  "Nothing," Astarte said. She resisted an impulse to put her hand on the Browning automatic under her black leather jacket, as if to keep Marilyn from taking it away from her.