by Max Anthony
He crouched down next to the pile of monkey. Some of it was taken from a formerly living creature. The eyes, hands and feet all looked a little bit too convincing to have been contrived by human hands. The rest of it was metal bars, wires, springs and a series of cogs, from which the torso had been mostly comprised. Skulks picked up a couple of metal bars with trailing wires and tried to twist them into a likely-looking hole in a cog wheel. Keeping these pieces in place with one hand, he tried to insert what he thought was an upper leg into another hole. Hoping he had been successful, he tried to balance the pieces on the floor while he looked for the next part. There was a mournful clatter as the unfinished monkey fell into pieces again.
“Bah,” muttered Skulks, undeterred by this setback.
After fifteen more such setbacks, he was feeling rather more deterred than he had but a few minutes ago. The monkey was no more complete than it had been when it came tumbling out of the cupboard in which it had been so carelessly abandoned. Although Skulks had a thief’s dexterity, none of the pieces wanted to remain joined. It was almost as if they rejected the notion of being part of the greater whole.
“Of course!” he exclaimed to himself. “This is a creation of magic and will require magic to reconstruct. Where would I find someone capable in the use of magic?” Of the many more appropriate answers available to him, Skulks found himself concluding that it was he who should demonstrate his magical prowess by reassembling the monkey.
He stared at it for a while longer. Then he waved his arms about and waggled his fingers in what he thought was a constructive manner. He mumbled some words under his breath. It was to no avail; the monkey remained steadfastly unfixed.
“A curse on the creature!” growled Skulks, walking around the scattered pieces. “If it were a lock I could put it back together as easily as this.” As he spoke, he directed his Wielding powers at the monkey in the same way he would use them to command a lock to his will. The parts stirred on the floor, three of them snapping suddenly together in a way Skulks would never have imagined them to fit. He focused on the other pieces of the monkey, which also slid across the floor, joining to pieces adjacent. Locks came naturally to Skulks and soon the components were clicking together rapidly. Snap-snap-snap, they went as they slotted into place. Soon all that was left were two hands and two feet, which Skulks twisted into position in order to finish his creation.
Looking at his silent companion which waited patiently for his command, Skulks stood with his hands on his hips.
“Splendid!” he said.
Six
Deep in the Chamber Building was a kitchen. This kitchen was staffed by eight employees of the city, whose job it was to provide subsidised meals for the hard-working clerks and guards who worked for the Chamber Council. It was now late in the day and many of the Council workers had left for home, leaving behind some of their more zealous colleagues who wished to remain beyond their paid time.
Two such late-leavers were to be found in the kitchen. They hadn’t stayed behind out of a sense of civic duty, but because they had drawn the short straw amongst the kitchen staff to determine who would stop back to clear up after the monthly clerks’ Planning Meeting. There were advantages to staying late, one being time in lieu, the second being freedom to take home a doggy-bag of the leftovers from the meeting.
“Twenty-four chicken legs,” said Wilf Sweeps to his co-worker Jimmy Reggle. He rubbed his hands together. “I reckon me brother’ll be able to sell them as fresh from his stall in the morning. Warm ‘em up again and off they go. That’s twelve Slivers’ worth, right there,” he boasted. It was certainly against council policy for the catering leftovers to be re-sold.
“Fifty-six party sausages and two dozen sandwiches,” cackled Reggle, stuffing his haul into a bag. “It’s my turn to bring the food for my quiz team, so these’ll do nicely, thank you very much Mr and Mrs Taxpayer!” While it wasn’t specifically against council policy to mock the largesse of taxpayers, it was definitely frowned upon.
“What’s left to tidy up?” asked Sweeps.
“There’re just a few empty plates to come. I think there’s a bowl of pickled onions and some cheese cubes on sticks. The greedy bastards ate all the hard-boiled eggs again.”
“Oh I like a nice pickled onion, I do. The missus always stinks of garlic, so I like to get me own back every once in a while.”
“Don’t take them all!” admonished Reggle. “Some of the quiz lads like a pickled onion too.”
With that they hurried back to the meeting room together, each worried that the other might pilfer more than his fair share of pickled onions or cheese on sticks. When they returned to the kitchen, the chicken legs, party sausages and sandwiches were gone.
“Robbed! We’ve been robbed!” spluttered Sweeps. “Did you lock the kitchen door behind you?”
“I always lock it, you idiot!”
As Sweeps and Reggle exchanged accusations, another zealous employee of the state was just finishing his eighth chicken leg. He threw the bone from one side of his office into the bin a dozen feet away, watching in satisfaction as it landed safely inside to join the other seven.
“Are you sure you don’t want one?” he asked the monkey, which was still clutching the bag of sandwiches and party sausages it had stolen at Skulks’ behest. The monkey looked at him with its unnervingly real eyes, but gave no indication that it was hungry.
“Fine, be like that,” Skulks told it. “I shall eat them all myself!” If the monkey was disappointed by this threat, it wasn’t letting on.
An observer of this scene might have been forgiven for thinking Skulks heartless. Whilst good people of his acquaintance lay in an imposed slumber, their declared saviour was eating chicken and casting the bones into his bin, betting himself a Sliver a time that his throw would be successful. This opinion would have been misguided - Skulks was very aware of the urgency, but he was waiting a short period for night to fall over the city.
“This is a stupid game,” Skulks told the monkey. “I already owe myself ten Slivers and I’ve only got eight in my pocket, so I am effectively two Slivers out of pocket now.” The eyes stared at him, unblinking.
“I need a name for you, friend monkey,” said Skulks, as he popped a cocktail sausage into his mouth. “Grunky? No, that doesn’t sound right. Pottle? No, that’s not good either.” As the twenty-first sausage landed on his tongue, he stopped in his tracks. “Chibbles!” he exclaimed. “I shall call you Chibbles!” If Chibbles was pleased to be thus dubbed, it did not celebrate with a smile or a backward flip.
With the unofficial and low-key naming ceremony completed, Skulks had a look outside his window. Darkness was rapidly approaching, which made it a good time to get started on whatever the night’s activities were to be. Skulks took the vial of green liquid from the shelf where he’d put it for safety and brought it to Chibbles’ eye level.
“Now then, I want you to take me to the place you stole this from,” he instructed it. He rose to his feet, expecting to have to sprint to keep up with the monkey’s eager questing, but instead it remained in place.
“Go on then!” Skulks instructed it, pointing towards the window. When it continued its refusal to move, Skulks began to wonder if he was approaching things correctly. “It has previously stolen this vial, and now I am effectively asking it to unsteal it,” he thought to himself.
He looked at the monkey. “Perhaps I need to ask it to walk backwards in order to unsteal something. Or walk on its hands.” Skulks threw his arms up in exasperation, even though he had been trying for less than a minute. Then he remembered something.
“I have a spell of spell re-tracking,” he said to the room. “It can’t be so hard to change the spell so that it causes the monkey to re-track that which it stole.” Skulks furrowed his brow in concentration as he attempted to eke something from his inchoate magic powers in order to command Chibbles to do his bidding. He found his arms waving, almost of their own volition. His mouth mumbled words that h
is ears did not recognize and his fingers wiggled in the air. Skulks felt the spell leave him as he cast it successfully. The monkey jerked upright as if listening to something of great interest. Then it was off.
While Skulks didn’t realise it, he’d just performed quite a sophisticated bit of wizardry. Normally a spell had a single, specific function. If a wizard wanted to tweak a conjuring spell so that, say, a brown dog appeared instead of a spotty one, they usually needed to create a whole new spell to do so. Skulks had just modified an existing spell on the fly, which was beyond the powers of many wizards. At least it was beyond the powers of many human wizards.
Ignorant to this and with no time to give himself a pat on the back, Skulks raced after Chibbles. The monkey had shot through his office window, unlocking it, opening it and springing through in a movement so rapid that Skulks had been almost in awe. The last time he’d seen someone operate at such speed was when he’d broken into Spout’s office through her window earlier that afternoon. Truly, Chibbles was a marvel.
Now the monkey sped through the Chamber Building gardens. Skulks watched as it blended into its surroundings, using a different, clumsier method to that used by the Wielder. Nevertheless, it was effective and it zoomed unseen past three late-night couples walking with linked arms through the beautifully tended grounds. Guard Crinkle made up half of one such couple and Skulks waved as he went by at a full sprint.
“She looks like a nice lass, Crinkle.”
“Good evening, Captain Skulks,” said Crinkle, though Skulks was already some distance away.
“Who was that?” asked Crinkle’s evening companion. “He was very fast.”
“Oh, that’s Captain Skulks,” said Crinkle airily, as if he knew him well. “He’s one of the lads, really.”
“I think you’d make a good captain,” said his companion, giving his arm a squeeze.
As their voices faded into the night, Skulks hot-footed it after Chibbles. The monkey was very good, but it wasn’t a natural like Skulks. The wizard Humpy Wagglehorn had designed it and her design was flawed, for she did not have any direct experience with thievery, apart from having been stolen from enough times to drive her into creating a clockwork monkey to get revenge on her tormentors.
Chibbles got the basics right by keeping to back streets and alleys. Even at this late hour the main streets of Hardened were far from deserted. Every so often, it would slip up and be seen by someone, though most people thought it was a small dog, speeding along home for its supper. One lady screamed when she caught sight of it, thinking it to be an enormous rat come to gnaw at the paper-wrapped parcel of cheese she was carrying home for her dinner. As Skulks dashed by shouting “Here Chibbles! Come here boy!” she became reassured that it was likely a dog or a cat, albeit an unusual-looking one.
After a chase lasting less than fifteen minutes, the monkey slowed down to a modest walking pace. It was in one of the nicer areas of town, but had chosen to follow a back lane behind a row of tall terraces. Skulks had only a slight interest in the architecture, but could see that there had been little recent building work in this part of the city. Generally, the wealthier the occupant, the harder it became to just stick a new floor on top of their dwelling when they weren’t looking. Much of the city’s construction took place in areas that were hard-working rather than specifically rich or poor, in the places which Hardened’s citizens felt were most likely to provide opportunity for themselves and their families.
Skulks had mulled for only a brief moment, but it had been sufficient time for Chibbles to scale a high back wall and disappear silently over the other side. As he followed it, equally silently, something was nagging at the back of Skulks’ mind. He didn’t know why, but he felt he knew this place and couldn’t put his finger on when he might have been here. Forewarned, he resolved to take extra care, even above the extra care he’d planned to take on what was likely to be a dangerous mission.
Having followed Chibbles over the wall, Skulks watched as the monkey crept silently up a flight of steps, which ended at a door. It raised a hand and swept it gently over the lock. Skulks was now only a few feet behind and heard a soft click as the lock turned. A simian paw reached up to pull the handle, but as it did so, the monkey turned its face to Skulks, with its strange, living eyes seeming to convey a warning to its new owner. Skulks nodded his head in quiet acknowledgement that he was ready for whatever might come. The back door swung open, pulled by the long arm of Chibbles. Without pause, the monkey went inside into the darkness.
Following it, Skulks found himself in a rudimentary kitchen of sorts. It lacked the creature comforts of a home kitchen, as if it were used for little more than the preparation of an occasional meal rather than being a place for a family to gather.
Chibbles was not interested in this room and had already exited through a door leading deeper into the property. Skulks knew that the monkey was skilled but he was not yet ready to fully trust its abilities. So, he paused and listened for any sounds nearby. It seemed unusually quiet. He also checked the room for any hidden traps or magical wards. Again, everything was in order. Regardless of the apparent lack of threat, Skulks felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. Something was wrong, he was certain.
Making himself hidden, he crept out of the kitchen area and along a corridor. There were two rooms leading off the corridor, neither of which had doors. There were boxes in the rooms, stacked high to the ceilings.
“Odd,” thought Skulks. “Could I be in a smuggler’s den? Or the house of another rich-but-corrupt merchant?”
At the end of the corridor, the answer was revealed and he was in neither of these places. He was in a shop. Again, the nagging feeling came back to Skulks that he knew this place and had been here recently. Crouching behind the counter, he peeped out. The shop appeared to stock clothing and good-quality clothing at that. He knew it was good-quality for some of the display shelves held only a single garment, the better to show off the clothing’s fine-stitched attributes. There were less than fifty garments in total in this one place; it was not a shop for rummagers.
Skulks could make out Chibbles on the other side of the room. It was standing still, in front of a shelf. Inching towards it, Skulks suffered a flash of realisation. One does not normally suffer a flash of realisation. Normally, one might expect to experience a flash of realisation. Unfortunately for Skulks, he had just remembered what this shop was. During his recent convalescence, before returning to the office, Skulks had taken to visiting a nearby tavern of an afternoon in order to relieve some of the boredom. On one such afternoon, he had been passing this shop, which he now knew was called Treau. A pair of undergarments in the window had caught his eye and he’d stumbled into the shop to look at them. He’d been quickly ushered from the store by the lady behind the counter and had made his way home. The following morning he’d woken to find that he’d stolen a pair of exceptionally swish, black silk undershorts. He was wearing them now because they were far too comfortable to just throw away and he hadn’t wanted to return them because he was still a thief at heart.
He got to his feet. Still new to the game of wizardry and clockwork monkeys, he’d evidently instructed Chibbles to track down an item which Skulks had stolen, rather than that which the monkey had stolen. Taking the vial of green liquid from his pocket, Skulks crossed the room to his faithful companion.
“Chibbles, it is the owner of this vial I wish to trace. You are a very disobedient monkey for confronting me with the facts of my own alcohol-induced thievery! Now let us discover who has created the noxious brew I hold in my hand!” With this admonition to the blame-free monkey, Skulks focused his not-considerable resources of magic and recast the spell of re-tracking.
Once again, Chibbles twitched violently upright and its head snapped to one side as if it were looking at something far off. Skulks could have sworn he heard a sniffing sound, but dismissed the notion for Chibbles had no nose. It scampered across the floor of the shop, back down the corridor, through th
e kitchen, over the wall and into the back street once more, with Tan Skulks close behind.
Fortunately, this unwanted diversion hadn’t taken long and Skulks was eager to make progress. Chibbles looked like it was heading for the docks. It showed signs that it still had something of the original monkey-Chibbles left within, when it stopped once to steal a bunch of bananas from a late-night fruit stall. For some reason, the lady on the stall was able to see Chibbles quite clearly.
“Hey, your metal monkey has just stolen some bananas from me!” she accused Skulks.
“Good lady, that is not a metal monkey, it is my pet dog Pumper,” he responded, fishing in his pocket for his Slivers.
“Eight Slivers,” she demanded. “And that ain’t no dog. Since when did dogs have hands and feet and steal bananas?”
“Eight Slivers?” howled Skulks in dismay, for it was all he had on him.
“These are special bananas,” she said. “We call them Equitable Fruits. A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s fruit. And they’re grown carefully, with nothing added but the soil.”
“Do they taste any better?” asked Skulks. “Will Pumper enjoy them more than a two Sliver bunch of bananas?”
“Your monkey will love them, I guarantee it,” she said, not at all willing to believe Skulks’ cock-and-bull tale of it being a dog.
Skulks was prepared to spend more time discussing the bananas and trying to convince the lady that Chibbles the clockwork monkey was definitely Pumper the dog, but he was forced to abandon this futile argument as his light-fingered simian companion was on its way again. On the ground nearby were the squashed remains of the bananas, resulting from the fruits being pushed against Chibbles’ angular metal face in an unsuccessful attempt to eat them. Skidding slightly on a discarded banana skin, Skulks pursued the monkey.
