Beneath Ceaseless Skies #213

by Greg Kurzawa

  * * *

  The midwives could not keep her father from the room, nor did they much try. They barely managed to cover her legs and waist before he shoved through them to rip away the sheets. Miriam turned her face so she would not have to see his face as he witnessed the disaster.

  “Where is it?” he demanded. “Show it to me.”

  The voice of the physician, subdued. “There is no child, Lord.”

  “Stillborn?”

  “No...”

  “Then show me the child!”

  They showed him all there was.

  In the quiet moment which followed, Miriam thought that he had gone—that after witnessing the muddy sheets and the empty rag of flesh, that he had simply departed in disgust. But then he had a fistful of her hair and was dragging her from the bed to send her sprawling on the floor. With one hand in her hair and another at her neck, he bent over her cringing form.

  “You were my favorite,” he snarled in her ear. “It was you I loved the most.” But his words were hot with wrath, and his sharpened nails bit into her neck. He lifted her slightly, only to crush her back to the floor again. “Where is my child?”

  Miriam spat back at him. “He is not your son.”

  The Lord of the Manor moved his hand from throat to jaw. His nails sunk into her cheeks, and he twisted her face towards the window. Pressing his own cheek to hers, they witnessed the bright stars together. “Look to the sky,” he commanded her. She could do nothing else. “The sun is coming, and coming soon, daughter. But if you do not give me my child I swear you will not see another day.” His voice lowered to impart a secret for the two of them only. “Your sisters, your pretty maid, the servants and the physician—all here now will glut my dogs if you hide him from me.”

  And even as the sky blushed with dawn, a vast shape descended to press against the window, and mud seeped in around the panes.

  “He is here,” Miriam said. “He is here now.”

  She shut her eyes tight just before the window burst inward, giving way to bulging scales and a mud-thick cascade. Her father was torn from her with sudden violence, leaving Miriam to fall wrist deep into the wash. She did not open her eyes when the tramp of people rushing to escape sounded all around her, nor even when the screaming began—a crescendo cut short as living mud clutched at thrashing bodies, dragging them into itself to fill their eyes and pack their lungs with muck. Their suffering was mercifully brief.

  In the new silence, Miriam opened her eyes.

  The Bahamut gathered himself before her, a writhing column of old flesh and new slime. Rapidly he assumed familiar shapes: arms and legs, a head, until he stood complete before her, neither human nor Raah but something shamelessly new. Dark skin slick and steaming, he smiled down on her with feverish pride.

  “None will harm you again,” he said tenderly.

  Through the window behind him, Miriam saw the rising sun burning blood-red.

  “The time of Man is long passed, and the time of Raah is passing quickly. It is our time now. My mother. My bride.”

  And Miriam saw the promise and the truth reflected in the wild purity of his vibrant green eyes.

  Copyright © 2016 Greg Kurzawa

  Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

  Greg Kurzawa studied theology at a small university in east Texas before taking a career in information technology. He is the author of the bleak fantasy novel Gideon’s Wall, which he self-published in 2006 to learn the process. Since then, his short fiction has appeared in various print and online venues, including previously in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and he has completed his second novel, The Sickness of Silas Traitor, for which he is seeking representation. Greg has two kinds of favorite stories: tragic ones, and ones that don’t give up their secrets without a fight. He currently lives in Omaha with his wife and three children.

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  THE MARVELOUS INVENTIONS OF MR. TOCK

  by Daniel Baker

  On Wednesday, a girl walked into the south-eastern station of the Ith Tol City Watch and exploded. This was odd. Passing strange. Weird, even. This had not, even in Ith Tol, been known to be something children did. Certainly some walking had been noted, even remarked upon, but combustion was a new and not altogether adorable turn of events. People died. They were watchmen (and women), granted, but people all the same. In certain circles, and these were predominantly dark, hidden, lofty, whispered circles, questions were asked.

  Q: What happened this time?

  A: A girl exploded in a Watch station, my lord.

  Q: You don’t say?

  A: I’m afraid so, sir.

  Q: Was it those Unionists?

  A: Unclear at this point, sir.

  Q: Was anybody hurt?

  A: Nobody that you knew, sir.

  Q: Thank the Light for that.

  A: Indeed, sir.

  Q: What are we doing about it?

  A: You have requested the local magistrate take the matter in hand, sir.

  Q: Did I now? Yes, yes, that does sound like something I would say. And what is, ah...

  A: He, sir.

  Q: And what is he doing about it?

  A: I believe he’s commissioned a case, sir.

  Q: A case?

  A: Yes, sir.

  Q: A case. Yes. Well, of course. A case. Naturally. What’s a case?

  Undoubtedly, it went something like this, and Justice Samuel Latch was handed the case. He’d never had a case quite like this because Justices weren’t really given cases—they were given names by their magistrate, who, in his or her not insignificant (but certainly not infinite... at least, not in Latch’s experience) wisdom, decided where and how justice was to be meted out. Monday and Tuesday had been something of a blur for Latch, and now Wednesday was shaping up to be a real inconvenience.

  * * *

  Wednesday.

  Latch stared at an ear and sipped his coffee. He grimaced. It was burnt. The coffee, and the ear, and together they weren’t doing much to brighten his mood. Standing amongst the rubble of the Watch Station, Latch tried to imagine what it had looked like before. He couldn’t. Not really. Not ever having set foot inside the building. He pictured stout wooden beams, squat brick walls, cheap desks with cheaper chairs tucked beneath them, men and women arriving for the day shift, leaving for home after night shifts, both camps blinking at the clock, wishing it wasn’t the time that it was. A blasted clock face read 7:43am. It all checked out. Everything, but the ear. That wasn’t standard issue.

  “Latch?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You were... chuckling.” A note of warning there, determined to make itself heard. Sunlight, in dribbles through cotton clouds and chilly air. Latch turned to his partner and frowned at her frowning at him. “Might want to chuck that.”

  Around them, some of the locals were picking through the wreckage, identifying the dead while traffic backed up down the street. Others gawped, half-eaten pieces of toast and bowls of porridge in their hands, the blast having wrenched them from breakfast. A few of those were staring at him and the stares weren’t altogether convivial, more like suspicious and bristly. He couldn’t really blame them. Nobody liked being interrupted during breakfast. He certainly didn’t.

  “Latch? You’re doing it again.”

  He threw away his coffee. “Just a joke, Elles.”

  Sergeant Elles, his Watch liaison, was the sort of woman Latch’s father used to call a “Good sort!” and his mother would have labeled “Woman shouldn’t flounce about in trousers like that! Men could get ideas!”. Latch just called her Elles, Elles just called him Latch, together they called the magistrate a pain in the balls, and got on with the job.

  She glanced at him, popped the collar of her coat against the chill. “A joke? After that that shit on Monday. And Tuesday. Thought you were suspended.”

  She was right. He had been. But he was also the only Justice not currently hip-deep in the city’s business. Ironic, given the circ
umstances. He knelt in front of the ear and studied the curve of the auricle, how the lobe was pink and plump. A perfect child’s ear. “On us.”

  “Punch line?”

  “Haven’t come to it yet, Elles.” Where the ear should’ve had a head, it sprouted wires. A whole tangled mess of them. The magistrate hadn’t mentioned wires. Latch picked it up. “But if you get there first, I’m all fucking ears.”

  She snorted, toed at the bricks. “You’re wrong, Latch.”

  “Not when I’m right, though.”

  She sighed and held out her hand. Latch gave her the ear and wandered a little further into what was left of the building, poking at pieces with his sword. Splatters of blood, and scorch marks. Voices carried over the destruction, calling out names and crying. Watchmen from the northern station kept arriving, formed lines to clear the rubble. Bodies, in rows and covered with sheets.

  Elles teased out one of the wires, twisting it about her finger. “You think the magistrate knew about this?”

  “I think the magistrate, like an iceberg, enjoys screwing anybody in his path with just the tip.”

  “Thanks. That’s an image I’ll never unsee.”

  “Sir! I...” A grey-faced watchman stumbled towards them, glazed cast to his eyes, something in his hand held as far away from his body as possible. “Sir, we found... this.”

  Held by its blonde hair, a small girl’s head rotated slowly back and forth in the watchman’s hand. Latch and Elles looked at the head, at each other, at the ear, then back to the head. About three or four, and smiling a wide, toothy smile. Half of her face was missing. Where it was missing, a chrome skull gleamed. A tuft of wire, where one of her ears should have been. Every now and then, a bluish spark in her nose and a lingering hint of burning carpet. The rest looked like flesh and blood.

  Latch took the head and held it up eye to eye. “What was that you were saying about unseeing, Elles?”

  But Elles was doubled over, vomiting, one arm braced against the rubble, the other outstretched, giving him the finger.

  * * *

  Thursday.

  People didn’t like justice. They always wanted it, but nobody really liked it. Latch didn’t see this as ironic. More like typical. Typical in a “Yeah, you’re nice and all, but what have you done for me lately?” kind of way. And then, if they actually got it, they were cut up about how reactionary, slow, cautious, and ultimately unsatisfactory it was. When the law failed, justice had to be done. An eye for an eye. Why eyes? Probably because justice was meant to be blind, and if you took enough eyes, from enough lawbreakers, it’d be able to see a little better. Not that he had any right to talk.

  Sitting in his apartment’s solitary armchair, sweat prickling his forehead, Latch stared out the window, at the lights of the city. He’d been dreaming, and the ticking had followed him. In the dream, he was holding her hand, walking towards the station. Her hand was cold, the grip painfully firm. They paused just before the station’s door and looked at one another. He knew what she was going to do. She didn’t have any thoughts beyond a tick, tick, tick, tick. She opened the door and stepped inside.

  Standing before a tall desk, she was ignored. Nobody stopped to ask her if she was ok, where her parents might be, what she was doing there, or why she was a tick, tick, tick, tick? They didn’t pause. Didn’t spare a glance. Like she didn’t exist. Like she was a hole in the ground they’d learned to avoid. Because they had a job to do and were doing it. She sat down on a bench against the wall, beside a drunk who swore and wavered and fell asleep and bled from a shallow gash above his eye that dripped on the armrest tick, tick, tick, tick. Latch sat down next to her, and she exploded.

  Still half-asleep, he’d stumbled about the apartment, rifling drawers, opening the cupboards in his tiny kitchen. Ticking from somewhere. He pressed his ear to the floor. He opened the door and searched the landing. Ticking everywhere. He looked under the bed and in the toilet’s cracked cistern, and where he looked the ticking was always and never there. Then he remembered he’d never owned a clock and the tick, tick, tick, tick was just the beating of his heart. Now the apartment was cold and dark and, from five storeys up, the sodium streetlamps were like rows of dying suns. On a small round table beside the chair, the girl’s head stared with him. He’d reattached her ear. Given what she’d been through, it seemed like the least he could do.

  * * *

  Wednesday.

  Three of the eastside courthouse’s basement walls held recessed alcoves filled with bodies, their chests laced by an autopsy’s Y, blue lips and toe-tags. Solid granite breathed frigid air. The girl had been arranged on the steel table before them, the salvageable pieces positioned anatomically, one bright light leaving her pale and stark. It flickered. The medical examiner, a wheezing young man called Davet, looked over his notes, with an assortment of scalpels and saws and retractors shining on a gurney behind him.

  “She was never alive. The skeleton is stainless steel,” Davet said, halting breaths between clauses, “and the skin isn’t hers.”

  “That’s a lot to take in a single sentence,” said Latch. “She was never alive. The skin isn’t hers.”

  Sergeant Elles grinned. “Buy a girl some dinner first, doc.”

  “Whose skin, then?” asked Latch.

  Davet shrugged, carefully placed his notes on the table near one of the girl’s fingers. “Underdetermined. Single source, though. And the skill required to attach it to the skeleton beneath. Then there’s the transfusive layer needed to keep the cells...”

  Davet had a tendency to lose himself in the details. Cooped up down here, absorbed in the how of corpses—Latch couldn’t blame him. Details needed you to be close, close enough to lose focus. So close that a bludgeoned body became ruptured capillaries, deepening bruise patterns, and the onset of rigor mortis. It meant he could give you a precise time and cause of death, but when you couldn’t see the human for the murder, some people took that the wrong way.

  Sergeant Elles stared at Davet blankly. “Are you telling us there’s a little girl out there walking around without her skin?”

  “No.”

  “Thank fuck for that!”

  “A woman like yourself, Sergeant, let alone a child, wouldn’t survive the flaying.”

  Before the sergeant could regret something, Latch stepped between them and picked up the head, his fingers brushing a slight indentation under the jaw.

  “This mark under the chin. What is it?” he asked.

  Davet squinted at the head, then retrieved his notes and flicked through. “A hallmark. Out of production.”

  Sergeant Elles leant against the wall, careful to avoid the dead feet. “A hallmark?”

  “Most common to silver and goldsmiths. Jewelers, too,” replied Davet, turning to the gurney. He picked a magnifying glass and handed it to Latch. “Functionally equivalent to a signature.”

  “Looks like one of those artists’ dummies with the articulated joints,” said Latch. It was squatting, knees up to its chin, the narrow bulb of its head canted to the side, considering the large cog held between its hands. “Anybody we know?”

  Davet nodded. “According to the assayer’s office, this particular hallmark was used by a little known toymaker. Mr. Tock.”

  “You’re joking, right?” Sergeant Elles snatched the notes. “A psycho bomber called Mr. Tock.”

  She held out the notes to Latch like they were evidence of the world gone mad, like the name was more ludicrous than a clockwork, explosive girl. It wasn’t the strangest thing he’d heard. A touch pithy, perhaps, but Ith Tol’s university attracted more than its share of clever, and the one thing that clever enjoyed more than doing clever was showing clever.

  Davet cleared his throat, Sergeant Elles rolled her eyes and handed the notes back. Smoothing them out against his chest, the young man wheezed contentedly.

  “Davet,” said Latch. “You said ‘little known’?”

  He looked up. “Yes.”

  “What was ou
r Mr. Tock known for?”

  “Toys. Figures. Animals.” He looked at the girl’s remains. “Anatomically correct and, primarily, fully functional automata. Very intricate designs. Perfect systems.”

  With her skin on, Latch figured, and all her bits unexploded, there’d be nothing to distinguish her from any other living, breathing, blonde-haired girl. Yeah, whoever this Mr. Tock was, he’d taken his time and invested it.

  “Seems like he’s moved up in the world,” he said.

  “Are we seriously going to search for a guy called Mr. Tock?” groaned Sergeant Elles.

  “We seriously are.”

  “All Gelb wants is a report to satisfy those from up on high. Broad strokes, Latch. You heard him. I know, because I was in the room with you. Right?”

  “Right.” Latch nodded. The magistrate had impressed upon them his desire for brevity. Justices, after all, didn’t investigate. They dispensed. They did what they were told. “But you know how much I’m a stickler with paperwork.”

  “Paperwork.” She threw up her hands, and wrenched open the door. “What the fuck is the world coming to?”

  Latch moved to follow her.

  “Justice?” said Davet, pointing to the girl’s head still Latch’s hands. “The head.”

  Latch smiled apologetically. “She’s my only material witness, and I’ve got a few more questions.”

  * * *

  Tuesday.

  When Latch kicks the door in, the painful vibration up his leg feels right. The hinges rip straight out of the pulpy timber. He doesn’t care if the rest of the building hears this or what’s about to happen. Latch wants them to hear. The dead weight of his sword, its thick, blunted edges scored with use, hangs at his side. This feels right, too.

  Carver is standing in his kitchen, behind the counter, holding a bowl of boiled potatoes. He stares at Latch, mouth wide, waving a spoon like an admonishing finger. Carver has just come home from the courthouse. Carver isn’t expecting him, because Carver thinks he’s done with justice. Carver is wrong.

  “My door!” he says around a mouthful of potato. The kitchen is surprisingly clean. There are a pair of silver candlesticks on the mantelpiece. These are equally clean, which is equally surprising. “You’ll pay for that.”