by A. R. Knight
“How?”
“Guide gear is only for, well, guides,” I said. “Only I happen to know someone who can get you something to fight with. Something that’ll let you take care of those spirits and give your clients some peace.”
“Who?”
“He’s in Riven,” I let a smile cross my face. Anna looked so suspicious it was funny, like I’d put in all this effort just to trick a sneak into a bad situation. “There’s a catch, though. What do you know about my mother?”
Anna laughed. “Sorry, Carver. I’m not telling you that. Not until you come through. I said you had to make me a guide, but if your magic man turns out to be a real thing, if I get my tools, then I’ll tell you.”
There’s few things as frustrating as getting locked away from what you want. My mother died, and I wanted to know why. Anna was the next link in that chain, but here she was, playing a hard game. That Nicholas could build her a weapon, I had no doubt. The problem was one of time.
Riven was getting worse, and Graham was coming. I didn’t want another Cane crushing my head in while I still had so many questions.
“Deal,” I said. “Tonight, we go to Riven together.”
“Think about it. A guide helping a sneak.”
“Don’t remind me,” I said, taking a long drink.
“I’m going to. This whole time. You, a guide, need a sneak.”
“Stop it.”
“No.”
Chapter 29
The first challenge was finding out where Anna crossed over. She’d mentioned that it was somewhere south of the clock tower, near the Warrens. Made sense, as most people dying in the usual ways showed up there at some point or another. Sneaks wouldn’t have to venture too far to find their targets.
As I went south from the clock tower, I saw plenty of sparks shooting up from various parts of the city. Guides were getting out in force lately with the war picking up and Riven getting more dangerous. Had to keep ghouls to a minimum, had to keep breaches closed. Normally I’d have been happy to see so much activity.
Now it would just make my job harder. I couldn’t be seen with Anna, or I’d have to have a real good story for why I was leading a sneak around Riven.
I’d told Anna to wait for me when she crossed. Running around wasn’t going to do anything more than getting her killed. She hadn’t taken that line very well, throwing me a raised eyebrow and replying that she’d been running around Riven as long as I had, thank you very much. I switched tactics and said I’d never find her if she moved around, and that worked a little better.
“I’ll give you half an hour,” Anna had said at the train station before we split.
It had to be getting close to that time. I was at the entrance to the Warrens, the Ghoul’s Gateway. Without Bryce, the crumbling arch was ominous. Less a lead-in to excitement and more a warning of terrors beyond. My hand drifted to the lash.
“You’re awfully slow for a guide,” Anna said, stepping out from behind the arch.
“You’re a terrible listener,” I replied, unwrapping my fingers from the lash’s grip. “Told you to wait where you crossed.”
“Figured you’d have a better chance of finding me here,” Anna said, looking up at the gateway. “So where’s this friend of yours?”
“Hold up,” I said. “There’s a lot of guides around, so some ground rules. First, I lead.”
“You’re the one who knows where you’re going.”
“I’m going to leave you here if you don’t stop interrupting me,” I said and Anna leaned against the arch with a shrug.
“Thought you could take it,” Anna said. “What with all your brave talk.”
“Look,” I pushed past it. “I need to have a reason you’re with me if we get found. That’s going to be that you’re a spirit I bound. Because you have information on another angry spirit.”
“I do, huh?”
“Yeah. Make something up if they press you.”
“That’s all? Just make something up?”
“I thought that’s all sneaks did.”
Now it was her turn to get defensive. Made me feel good.
The walk back to Selena’s apartment, now also Nicholas’ lab, was made mostly by ducking into alleys, using the periodic spark showers as signposts to be avoided. I listened for any noise. Fighting, footsteps, conversation. Anna, for her part, focused once we started moving and kept quiet.
After an hour, twice as long as it would’ve taken on a normal night, we made it to the apartment. Nicholas greeted us at the door, taking Anna in with a close look from his goggled eyes.
“Assuming this is your friend?” Anna said. “Cause if you were to ask me who was making weapons in Riven, a person decked out in goggles and a lab coat would be my first guess.”
“I’m Nicholas Salzer, at your service,” the scientist said, extending a dirty, gloved hand. Anna glanced at the offered palm, hesitated, then shook it with gusto.
“Anna Blanc. Pleasure,” Anna said. “Carver’s been telling me about your prowess.”
“Years of hard work pays off,” Nicholas said. “Was doing quite well for myself back in the real world. Unfortunately, explosions can be a tad unpredictable.”
“Nicholas, stop scaring her,” I said, more afraid that Anna was going to ask Nicholas for the full story. We’d be here for hours, time I didn’t have. “She needs a weapon. You have any lying around?”
As I finished talking, I went by the scientist and into the apartment. From the doorway I’d caught a hint of changes, and once I went through, wow. Gone was the long table Selena and I used to sit at. Even the chairs had been pushed to the edges of the room. A new, smaller, boiler was out on the balcony, pipes streaking into the apartment and wrapping through a long series of machines that I couldn’t identify.
Some were obvious - a forge for heating metal, a stove that appeared to have several boiling liquids on it, and then three other contraptions that dominated the rest of the space that I couldn’t identify.
“I don’t have one ready-made, no,” Nicholas said. “Despite your predilections, Carver, I’m not a store. I do not have limitless stock on demand for you.”
“Selena really lost the battle for this place, didn’t she?” I said, continuing my inspection.
“Selena?” Anna said from behind me.
“My co-habitator,” Nicholas said. “She was generous enough to support the mission at the expense of her own living space, yes.”
“Where is she?” I said.
“Outside, watching the storm of sparks your fellows are setting loose,” Nicholas said. “Now, when you say weapon, what are you looking for?”
“Something for her,” I said. “Easy to learn.”
“Strong and deadly,” Anna countered. Nicholas took a slow look at her.
“You’re not a guide,” Nicholas stated. “If you are not a guide, then do you have any formal training in the arts martial?”
“I’m savvy,” Anna said. “I know how to throw a good punch. Enough bar fights have taught me that.”
Nicholas rubbed his chin, his wispy beard. He kept staring at Anna with an intensity that, with anyone else, would have been creepy. I knew, though, that behind those eyes numbers were dancing a tango that would end with some devilishly cool device.
“I have it!” Nicholas announced. “Only, I cannot make it here. Or rather, I can, but I’m missing the necessary pieces.”
“Of course you are,” I said, and Nicholas shot me a glare.
“It was you who told me to abandon my lab,” Nicholas said. “Were we still there, all this would take is a night of work. Now, however, I’ll need you two to go back to my former residence and collect a few items.”
“We’ll do it,” Anna said. I sighed.
Chapter 30
I found her on the balcony, staring at the sparks popping up into the sky. Selena looked radiant in the gray light wearing a new dress that I’d never seen before.
“Nicholas made it for me,” Selena said,
without looking at me. I watched a series of amber sparks ripple across her eyes. “A gift for letting him move in here. I didn’t even know you could make dresses in Riven.”
“Nicholas is a talented guy.”
We said nothing for a moment. Behind me, back in the apartment, I could hear Nicholas telling Anna more about his planned weapon. She was peppering him with questions and, if there was one thing Nicholas liked, it was answering inquiries.
“I found him,” Selena said. “Graham.”
“Where?”
“We spoke,” Selena said, and now she turned to me. “He wants me to bring you to him.”
“That sounds like a trap.”
“It is,” Selena said. “I don’t want you to go. You told me he might have a way of bringing me back, and I think he does, but it’s not a good one.”
“Even if it’s the worst thing Riven has ever seen, I don’t have a choice,” I said. “Graham’s a danger to everyone, including you and Nicholas. I can’t just let him run around out there.”
“I thought you’d say that,” Selena slipped into a sad smile. “Always running towards adventure.”
“You’re not so different,” I said. I wanted to talk about what I’d found, what Opperman had told me, but there didn’t seem to be a good way to bring it up. What would Selena think if she knew I’d had her investigated?
“It’s easier when you’re already dead,” Selena said. “Who’s the new girl?”
“She knows something about my mother. In exchange, I’m having Nicholas set her up.”
“Nothing else?” Selena raised an eyebrow a millimeter.
“And get on your bad side?” I laughed. “I’ve got enough people trying to kill me. No thanks.”
I leaned in, slid my arm around her waist and brought her close. Tried to find a line, something smooth to say, and settled for a kiss. Selena didn’t back away from it.
“We’ve got to go get something for Nicholas,” I said. “But when I get back, we’re picking this up where we left it.”
“So you do like the dress.”
“I love it,” I said. Gave Selena a nod and turned to go back into the apartment.
“Carver, don’t get yourself killed out there,” Selena said.
“Not the plan,” I replied, then walked back inside. I really needed to work on my goodbyes. ‘Not the plan’? What kind of a phrase was that?
“Let’s get going,” I said to Anna as she and Nicholas huddled over a desk where the scientist was sketching something. “I’ve got things to do tonight.”
The Tar Pit was getting a little too familiar. One of those places where I didn’t want to spend a lot of time, but now here I was again. Nicholas’s lab sat in front of us, the main doors still broken from Cane and Spike’s visit last night.
“You set him up nice,” Anna said. “I’m assuming that you’ve bound both of them?”
I glanced at her. It wasn’t common knowledge that a guide could keep a spirit around if they wanted. “I might have.”
“Heard that’s not easy to do,” Anna said, leaving the sentence hanging there.
I could’ve told her that the process was arduous. That you first had to befriend the spirit, or at least get it to accept what you were going to do. Then you had to find an area that the spirit could call home. A place that would be safe. For Selena, that’d been her apartment. For Nicholas, his lab. After that, well, it took a handshake. A kiss. Some form of physical contact.
I’d bound two spirits, and binding more than one was very much frowned on by the guides. Binding was disruptive - it kept spirits from the Cycle and established permanence in a world that didn’t want any. Not to mention there was the potential for exactly what Selena and I were doing. Guide - Spirit romances were so forbidden as to be blinding offenses. Guides would take you and strip your connection to Riven. Then charge you with the literal crime so you rotted in prison too, just to kick you in the teeth.
“It’s not fun,” I said. “But for the right spirit; it’s useful.”
I didn’t let Anna get going with her next sentence, but walked fast inside the lab. Nicholas had us questing for a pair of parts to get Anna’s weapon put together. First was a chain he’d been building as an eventual substitute for my lash. That was easy - the chain hung on a crude hook slammed into the back of the far wall.
The lab apart from the chain was a study in random destruction. Materials and machines were scattered around. Tables overturned and shattered. Yet, even with a cursory glance, it didn’t look like things had been so ruined as to be irreparable. If we could guarantee Graham wouldn’t be a problem anymore, then Nicholas would be able to come back here without much fuss.
“I’m not seeing the ball,” Anna said, digging around. That would be the second item we needed. Nicholas described it as a beige sphere. I had asked what it did and he said that he’d show us when we brought it back.
“I have it,” said a new voice, soft and strong. Leaning on the lab’s door, the beige sphere held in her hand, was a spirit wrapped in a tight series of ashen bands. Her shoulders and arms were bare, but the bands covered the rest of her, leaving her eyes and her straight hair the only other parts visible. Rising over her back, I could see a pair of handles. Or hilts.
“Guessing you’re not going to give it to us?” I asked, drawing the lash.
“Do you work for Graham?” the spirit asked.
“Who’s Graham?” Anna said at the same time as I was saying “No.”
“Then you can’t lead me to him?” the spirit said, ignoring Anna and looking at me.
“Don’t know where he is,” I said. Anna flipped glances between the two of us.
“Then you’re no use to me,” the spirit said. She turned to leave.
“Give us the sphere,” Anna said, her tone way too aggressive for someone that had no weapon. The spirit paused, turned to look at Anna.
“Do you know where you are, girl?” the spirit said. “Because threats here must be backed up by something more than words.”
“They are,” I moved forward, snaking the lash behind me. With a flick, I could have the lash streaking through the air towards the spirit’s face.
“I suppose I could use the practice,” the spirit murmured. Then, with a snap of her arm, she threw the sphere at me. I caught it with my left hand, but the motion meant I didn’t crack my lash.
The spirit used that moment to draw the weapons on her back, a pair of wooden batons with metal hooks on the top end. Batons with the telltale line near the grip that indicated they could be twisted to ignite wrangling fire. A guide’s weapon.
I danced back as the spirit came at me with a spinning flurry of blows. The edges of those batons blurred by inches from my face. But those inches were the difference between dead and alive.
I snapped the lash back, then cracked it forward as the spirit whirled into a half-crouch, glaring up at me with her batons ready. Then she did exactly what I’d hoped.
The lash blitzed forward and the spirit stuck one of her batons in the way. The baton blocked the strike, but the lash wrapped around the spirit’s weapon. With a snap of my wrist, I whipped the baton out of her hand and sent it flying across the room.
The spirit made the most of that vulnerable instant, charging into me. She used the baton in her left hand to strike at my right elbow, pinning my lash back. I felt her empty right hand reaching for my long knife. Couldn’t let her get that and poke me to pieces.
I grabbed the spirit’s wrist as she made another grab for the knife and twisted it. I should have been strong enough to break it, but the spirit moved with my force, jumping and twisting so that her legs wrapped around my face. My eyes bulged as her knees pushed into my temples, her hand still pulling for that knife.
Not what I’d expected, but if there was anything I’d learned as a guide, it was that most fights were dirty. The dead had no dignity. So I turned around, stumbling, and then ran at the wall behind me. I felt the spirit try to release my head, try to
scramble away, but I held her legs with my hands, trapping her.
Just before we struck the wall, the spirit arched her back, threw her arms out in front of her towards the wall, and, as we hit it, pushed. The sudden opposite force coupled with my legs hitting the wall to knock me, still holding the spirit, on my back.
The spirit rolled off of me as I coughed up air. She hadn’t escaped unscathed. I stood up and followed her as the spirit limped back to her baton, her left wrist hanging at a strange angle. Probably broken from the impact.
“For a guide,” the spirit said, looking back at me. “You’re a clever fighter.”
She picked up her baton, then, and came at me again. My left hand went for the knife, but it wasn’t there. As I looked up at the spirit, I realized why. Her wrist was at a weird angle because of her grip on the knife. Hiding it along the length of her arm.
The spirit with my knife ran at me, pointed right for my throat.
“Carver!” Anna yelled from across the lab. In my peripheral, I saw her throw something at me. The other baton. I caught it as the spirit hesitated. Staring at me.
“What, you’re done now?” I said.
“A trade,” the spirit said suddenly. “The knife and the sphere for the baton.”
I glanced at Anna. Even if the spirit had some sort of fancy trick planned, I felt better without her having the knife.
“Deal,” I said. The spirit threw the knife at my feet. I looked at it. Thought about picking it up and just going after the spirit with both weapons. Only, the spirit had no pale fire in her eyes. She had an agenda. She seemed to want to hurt Graham.
I gave the spirit her baton back. She took it and, without another word, bolted from the lab.
“Was that strange?” I said, watching the door the spirit had fled through. “Because that seemed strange.”
“She was killing you,” Anna said. “Not very impressive for a guide.”
“Please, that was all part of my plan. Get her overconfident, then surprise,” I said.
“Right,” Anna said. “That’s what was going to happen.”
