The House of the Stag

by Kage Baker

  “Thank you.” Muttering to himself, Gard walked back to his room and did as he had been advised.

  His wife was asleep. He listened to the sound of her breathing and ached to hold her.

  Quickfire was pleased with himself. He was trudging along on a red road, free under the open air, pulling a cart.

  Three weeks past he had left the mountain with a trading caravan; Lady Pirihine had paid his passage along their mazed and hidden routes, with ice axes and ropes, across snowfields and down glaciers.

  Two weeks past he had escaped the caravaners, stealing a two-wheeled cart from their camp and loading in the two trunks Lady Pirihine had sent with him. He had ensured a long head start by offering them drugged wine beforehand. He had never seen any signs of pursuit. Perhaps he had given them enough of the drug to kill them. Perhaps they didn’t know the Narcissus of the Void well enough to dread failing her.

  Quickfire knew her well enough, but then again he had no intention of ever returning to her embrace. His plans, in brief, were to make his way to Mount Flame City, sell whatever was in the trunks to any mage willing to offer the right price, and live like a prince the rest of his days.

  To this end he walked on patiently. A structure was far ahead, the first he had seen in this desolate backland. Something about it tugged at his memory. By the time he was within a mile of it, he recognized the place.

  It was a Red House, the last on the caravan line … or the first, depending on the direction from which one had traveled. Within the high fortifications, he could just make out the peaked roof of the Common Hall. He fancied he saw smoke rising from the chimneys.

  Quickfire came to the gate. He smiled up at the statues of the two heroes Andib the Axeman and Prashkon the Wrestler, on the gateposts. “Hello, old friends,” he said.

  A head in a pot helmet poked over the parapet. “Hai! Who’s down there?”

  “Only a happy traveler. Are you going to let me in?”

  The guard looked past Quickfire and to either side. “There’s just you?”

  “Only me. I’d open the gate, if I were you. My family avenges insults.”

  “I was just hoping for a few more in your party, is all. Times are hard.”

  The guard vanished behind the wall, and a moment later the gate swung open. Quickfire walked into the courtyard, pulling the cart after him. He saw that he had been wrong about the smoke: it rose not from the Common Hall but from a forge to one side, where a man was repairing a broken cartwheel. The Common Hall looked silent and deserted.

  Quickfire delved into his pouch and brought out a coin. “Carry my trunks within, won’t you?”

  The guard muttered something about how that was a porter’s job, but pocketed the coin anyway and took the two trunks inside, staggering under their stacked weight. Quickfire followed, looking around gleefully.

  “Paver! You’ve got a guest,” the guard said, wheezing as he set the trunks down by the fire pit. A man walked out of the kitchen, rubbing his hands dry on an apron. Quickfire threw the guard another coin, a gold one this time, and the Housekeeper saw its glint and hurried to greet Quickfire.

  “Welcome to Red House, traveler. You catch us at an awkward time; half the staff’s away, foraging. We can feed you, though. I was just fixing myself a meal. Care to share it with me?”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Quickfire, looking at the Housekeeper attentively. “Did he say your name was Paver?”

  “Paver it is, sir. And what’s your house, may I ask?”

  “Beatbrass. I’m Vergoin Beatbrass. I’ll just warm myself here, shall I, while you bring out the food?”

  “You know, it’s a curious thing,” said Quickfire, helping himself to a handful of figs, “but I’d heard the Housekeeper here was missing an eye.”

  It had grown late; the sun was long since set, the gates barred for the night, and the fire had burned low in the pit. “Ah! That was my father, Bexas Paver,” said the Housekeeper. “He kept the place for years, before I took over.”

  “Dead now, I suppose?”

  “Five years since. Bunch of drunken demons tried to break into the cellars. He died defending his kegs,” said the Housekeeper with a chuckle.

  “What a pity. Well, what’s the news? I’ve been out of touch.”

  The Housekeeper sopped up oil with a piece of bread and stuffed it in his mouth. “What’s the news … had you heard the Master of the Mountain’s gone and taken himself a wife? And she’s keeping him home nights? In a manner of speaking?” he said indistinctly as he chewed.

  “The Master of the Mountain? Now, who would that be?”

  The Housekeeper stared at Quickfire in surprise and swallowed. “The Dark Lord? Him that’s built a fortress up on the Black Mountain in the Greenlands? You must have heard of him!”

  “Sorry, no.”

  “Gods below, where have you been these five years past?”

  “Overseeing one of my family’s mines, back here. I never heard any news from home, except complaints over the cost of shipping ingots. So tell me, Mr. Paver, what have I been missing?”

  “Bloody hell.” The Housekeeper rubbed his chin. “Where to start? Well, the Chrysantines are all dead; they got in a war with Skalkin Salting, and he wiped them out. He’s duke in Deliantiba now, and Silverhaven, and lately there’s been talk he’s going after Port Blackrock. I don’t think he’ll dare try, though, as long as the Steelhands are running the place.

  “And he’s got this other problem, see, which is that this Master of the Mountain has been raiding his caravans and even his warehouses. Don’t know why he’s got it in for Duke Salting, but he’s made it hard for the duke to keep sticking his little flags on the big map. Got a demon army and that big fortress, and he’s a mage, too.”

  “Is he, now? Where’d he come from?”

  “Nobody knows.” The Housekeeper refilled their wine cups. “Though I’ve heard the greenies know something about him. They hate his guts; he raids them too, see. Doesn’t raid our cities, though he comes down bold as you please to visit his ladies.”

  “Ladies? Is he handsome?”

  “Gods, no. Big dark bastard. Even when he disguises himself as one ofus. But you know how women are. Decent red men like us, they treat like garbage; but they’ll lie down for demons and half-breed trash every time. Six mistresses, he has!”

  “And he started raiding five years ago?” Quickfire said thoughtfully.

  “Just about. And now he’s raped some priestess or goddess or something that belonged to the greenies and got a baby on her.”

  “A child? Really.”

  “Mr. Paver, I’ve finished cleaning,” said the scullery boy, emerging from the kitchen. “May I go to bed?”

  “Go,” said the Housekeeper, with a wave of his hand. The boy went out, and the Housekeeper got up to bar the doors behind him. “There,” he said, returning to his seat by the fire. “Shut up for the night. You’ve got the place to yourself; plenty of room to stretch out, eh?”

  “The staff don’t sleep in here?”

  “Just me. The rest of them have the sheds under the wall.”

  “Ah. Well, what other news? What do you hear about Mount Flame City?”

  “Mount Flame? Nothing much … the street wars are still just as bad. The Knives were having a big funeral for one of their own, with a parade and a Cursing Priest and everything. The Broadaxes showed up and called them down. There was a riot in the stoneyard. Three hundred dead. The smoke of the pyres covered the sky.”

  “What do you hear of the Quickfires?”

  “Quickfires?” The Housekeeper frowned, shook his head. “Sorry, don’t know them. Are they a gang?”

  “No! They’re one of the first families of Mount Flame! There was a Quickfire commanding one of Duke Rakut’s fleet. There’ve been Quickfires on the Council since the city was founded.”

  “Haven’t heard much of them lately, then,” said the Housekeeper apologetically, avoiding Quickfire’s gaze, for a disturbing glitter had come int
o his eyes.

  “Why then, I’ll tell you a story about them,” said Quickfire. “Their bitter enemies, in Council and in trade, were the Smaragdines. The Smaragdines were an old house, and there was no heir. The old Lord Quickfire had no heir either; all his sons had been killed. But he took a young wife and got himself a new boy, so the line would go on. Old Lord Smaragdine couldn’t even get it up, no matter how many wives he’d had, and it must have been sand in his bread and bitter wine for him to think of the Quickfires living on when his house died.

  “So he got a man into the Quickfires’ house, and one day when the child was about five, this man told him there were plum trees full of fruit in the forest, and if the boy would come with him, he’d take him there, so he could eat all he wanted. The boy agreed to go with him at once, he was so young and trusting. What d’you think happened then?”

  “No idea,” said the Housekeeper, throwing another log on the fire.

  “The man showed the boy a set of clothes, poor beggar-child clothes, and told him he’d have to disguise himself, or the city guard would never let them go out to the forest where the plum trees grew. So the boy took off his fine little tunic and his golden chain and put on the dirty old clothes. Then the man took him out of the garden and out through the streets of Mount Flame City, and through the Brass Gate. The city guard never so much as looked twice at him. Care to guess what happened then?”

  “I expect he killed the boy,” said the Housekeeper, shifting in his seat.

  “No, no; he wasn’t that kindly. He led the little fellow by the hand into the deepest part of the forest, with the boy asking all the time where the plum trees were, and they came to a camp in the woods where there was a sort of a dirty trading-caravan, all half-breeds and low races, with their carts full of loot. The man sold them the boy. The boy screamed and fought, but they locked him in a cage in the back on one of the carts. They took him away with them, on dirty little forest tracks. What do you think of that?”

  “Sorry to hear about it,” muttered the Housekeeper.

  “Now, here’s the really interesting part of the story. After weeks and weeks of traveling, the boy had managed to work a couple of the bars of his cage loose. He was scared to run away, though; he was a long way from cities or anyone he knew.

  “But then, one night, the stinking bastards stopped at a Red House. You can’t imagine how glad the boy was to hear real people speaking at last! And that was when he pushed out the bars and crawled from under the sacking that hid his cage, and ran limping to the Housekeeper and told him everything, with the half-breed caravan master standing right there to be accused. Shall I tell you what the Housekeeper did then?”

  “What’d he do—,” the Housekeeper began. Quickfire produced a knife from his boot and moved too fast to be seen; suddenly he was staring full into the Housekeeper’s face, with bright hard eyes. The Housekeeper, gasping, looked down at the knife protruding from his sternum.

  “Have I mentioned that the Housekeeper had only one eye? He had,” said Quickfire pleasantly, driving the knife in a little deeper. “And he laughed at the boy and pocketed the bribe the caravan master gave him. The boy was beaten and bound and thrown in a new cage. They took him away in the morning and he ended up in a place you can’t even imagine. That was the last the little boy ever saw of the cities of the Children of the Sun.

  “Wasn’t that vile of the Housekeeper, betraying one of his own race like that? The more so as he must have had a son of his own, just about the boy’s age.” Quickfire gave the knife a twist and pulled it out, and the blood ran out fast.

  “Nothing personal, son of Bexas Paver, but you know the proverb: ‘If the father can’t pay, the son must.’ “

  The Housekeeper sighed, slumped in his seat, and died. He looked as though he had fallen asleep.

  Quickfire smiled. His smile faded as he considered what it would take to get out of the Red House alive. He went to the kitchen and washed the blood from his hands, and cleaned and oiled his knife. Then he came back and looked thoughtfully at the little sea of blood under the Housekeeper’s chair, which was seeping down into the fire pit and hissing in the embers. His smile returned.

  He went back into the kitchen and emerged with an apron, tying it on. Blood no longer dripped from the chair. Effortfully he lifted the housekeeper’s body and carried it off to a small curtained alcove at the rear of the room. The curtain, shoved back, proved to have been concealing the Housekeeper’s bed. Chuckling, Quickfire laid the corpse in the bed, arranged it on its side, and drew the blanket up.

  After pulling the curtain to, he went back and tossed the apron in the fire pit, following it with the Housekeeper’s chair. The fire blazed up agreeably. “That just leaves you,” he said to the bloodstain on the floor. “What’ll I do about you?”

  As he stood there, his gaze fell on the trunks Lady Pirihine had sent with him. He knew they contained thaumaturgic apparatus of some kind; he wondered whether something in them might remove or hide the blood. He went to the larger of the two and opened it.

  Something lay under a shroud of silk. He pulled the silk away and exclaimed softly. Then he shouted in horror and leaped back. The thing had moved.

  It shook itself and rose slowly from the trunk, until at last it hung in the air like a puppet on invisible strings, like a marionette the size of a living woman. It seemed made of burnished gold, and though there were no strings, the individual limbs and joints dangled loosely, apparently unattached to one another. He could see firelight through the doll’s elbows and knees. The head was like a masked helmet floating above the neck.

  It shook itself again and its floating parts came a little more into alignment. The head turned toward Quickfire. The eyes opened with a tiny clink. Two white spheres bobbed behind the empty sockets and rotated until a pair of irises centered themselves. The eyes seemed to focus on him.

  The mouth dropped open with another clink. He could see straight through to the back of the head. The lips clattered open and shut a few times, before a high sweet voice sounded. “Oh, Quickfire, for shame. You weren’t thinking of deserting me, were you?”

  “No—” He took a step backward. To his dismay the thing floated toward him, its golden toes dragging just above the floor.

  “You wouldn’t do such a dreadful thing, would you? After all I’ve done for you? I’m depending on you now. I’ve no one else left. Not even poor old Vergoin.”

  “Wh-what happened to Vergoin?”

  “He died.” The golden shoulders rose and fell in a shrug, chiming slightly. “Probably a mercy, don’t you think? But I’d be sorry to see you die too. I hope you won’t make me angry, Quickfire.”

  “I didn’t trust the caravaners. I heard them plotting to cheat you. That was why I left them.”

  A trill of scornful laughter was the response. “Hardly likely. We’ve used that firm for years. They’ll always come back. Shall I tell you why?

  “Each one carries in his soft flesh a little sealed vial of glass. Each vial contains a host of tiny creatures. They have all they need to live in there; and live they do, and breed, and multiply. They’re quite harmless … as long as they remain in the vial. Any attempt on the part of the bearer to cut it out will make the vial shatter, and then the little monsters swarm out and consume flesh with a ravenous appetite. It’s a nasty way to die.

  “And suppose the prudent bearer leaves the vial alone, but fails to obey my orders and return to the mountain? Why, then the creatures in the vial go on breeding, and breeding, and one fine day there will be so many they’ll burst out of the vial from mere pressure. And then, as he’s rolling on the floor screaming in his agony, don’t you think that bearer will regret his disobedience? Because if he’d come back as he was bid, I would have safely removed the vial before it was too late.

  “Have you noticed a soreness in the small of your back, dear Quickfire? Just in a place you can’t reach? That’s where I put your own little vial.”

  Involuntarily, Quickfire
clutched at his back. “But I don’t remember—”

  “Oh, you were sound asleep in my arms at the time. Aren’t you glad I found a way to come along and watch over you? Still, no harm done. Here we are!” The head turned, as though looking around. “So this is the outside world! Rather sordid. I always thought your people lived in splendid palaces.”

  “This is only a way station. We’re still out in the wilderness.”

  “Really.” The simulacrum made a few experimental walking motions, to and fro. The limbs rose and dropped with little bell-notes. The head turned from side to side. “What’s this on the floor?”

  “Blood. I had to kill someone.”

  The simulacrum bent at the waist, arms dropping forward loosely. A moment of practice and it was able to coordinate one arm and hand enough to dip one of its golden fingers in the blood. It straightened up, in little jerks, and opened its mouth; slid the fingertip in. Though Quickfire, watching in appalled fascination, could see no tongue there, the blood had been licked clean away when the fingertip was withdrawn.

  “Oh! That’s good. Oh, I can’t wait to taste Outside food. This is going to be distracting, I can see. So many new experiences.”

  “How are you doing this?”

  “How do you think, silly? Aren’t I Pirihine Porlilon, Narcissus of the Void? My grandfather was the greatest mage who ever lived, and all his power is distilled in me. The rest of them were a lot of old dullards! They might have walked free of the mountain ages ago, if they’d discovered how to animate a simulacrum. Only I have ever worked out how to do it. Don’t you think I’m clever?”

  “Very clever.”

  “I hope you’re clever too. Have you found out anything useful for me?”

  For the first time since the simulacrum had emerged from the trunk, Quickfire smiled. “Yes. It would appear that Gard now has a wife. And a child.”

  The Saint sat bolt upright in bed, gasping. Gard, instantly awake beside her, put out his hand and caught her shoulder. “What is it?”

  She had to draw two deep breaths before she could answer. “Nothing. Only a dream.” But she clutched at her belly as she sank back on the pillow. She gazed up at the black hangings, the black depths of the midnight room.