The Builders

by Polansky, Daniel

  After thirty seconds or so the artillery ended. The Captain slipped a cigar from his pocket, lit it, and took a few shallow draws. “You sure?”

  Chapter 21: A Killer’s Pride

  “I will be honest with you, my old friend—this whole thing is wounding my ego.”

  Bonsoir was pacing back and forth on a dune a long ways off from the hacienda, the jet-black of his fur standing out against the pink sand.

  “I hear ya,” Boudica grunted. She lay motionless just beneath the crest of the hill, gray fur stained to dull khaki by the dust. From twenty paces away she was absolutely indistinguishable from the sediment surrounding her—save for the long, glittering barrel of her rifle. It was an unnecessary obfuscation, in all likelihood. They were too far from the meeting place to be seen unaided, a fact that explained Bonsoir’s distinct lack of stealth. But Boudica was a professional, and professionalism means doing it right even when it doesn’t matter.

  “Bonsoir is the greatest infiltration specialist in history. Bonsoir is as slippery as moonlight, as slick as shade and as swift as sin.”

  “No question.”

  “And what is Bonsoir doing, with all his talent? With his ability that no one, not Bonsoir’s worst enemies—not that Bonsoir leaves so many of those alive to have an opinion one way or the other on the matter, needless to say—but still, if one was up above the ground, and you were to ask him, ‘Bonsoir, is he everything they say he is,’ this theoretical enemy would be heard to answer, ‘Yes, without question.’ What was I saying?”

  “Not sure.”

  Bonsoir paused for a moment. “The point is, this is a misuse of my genius.”

  “Captain’s got his plan.”

  “Indeed he does! And the Captain, he says he does not need Bonsoir today! He says that today is not Bonsoir’s! That you and the lizard will take care of the ones outside, and that Barley and his cannon will take care of the ones in the barn, and so there is nothing left for Bonsoir.” Bonsoir scowled and kicked at the dirt.

  “It’s tough.”

  “The indignity!” Bonsoir said, sticking one finger straight up in the air. “It is an insult to my ability, that’s what it is! A disgrace to my line and lineage, to my people and nation and . . .”

  Bonsoir would almost certainly have continued on in this fashion had not the retort of the rifle cut him off.

  “Did you get her?” Bonsoir asked.

  Boudica looked up from the weapon with a pained expression.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You can see how out of sorts this whole thing has made me.”

  “You’ll get your turn soon enough.”

  Chapter 22: The Price of Certainty

  “I’ve heard about you,” Angie Weasel said. Slyly, as if betraying a secret.

  This news did not seem to excite Cinnabar. His eyes hung dully on the closed door of the hacienda, as if hoping to follow his commander through the rough stone.

  “I guess everyone’s heard about you.”

  The shuttered window on the second floor of the hacienda peeked open, and Celia Weasel, the youngest of the clan, leaned the barrel of her Winchester out of it. It was an ominous sign, one Cinnabar gave no indication of noticing.

  “Is it true you killed High-Hand Lawrence and Hotpants the squirrel during the same card game?”

  Nothing from Cinnabar. No words, no change in his demeanor, no breathing, only the absolute stillness of which only a cold-blooded creature is capable.

  “I wonder if you’re as fast as they say,” Bessie Weasel chirruped, her hand slowly straying toward her belt.

  “Wondering is free,” Cinnabar said finally, his voice soft and low. “Certainty has its price.”

  The blast from inside was the signal. Angie Weasel went for her iron with all the speed and vigor possessed by a member of her race. Bessie Weasel was only a hairsbreadth slower in swiveling her shotgun. Celia Weasel was caught off guard but responded with a reasonable degree of alacrity all the same.

  It is a scientific fact that time is infinitely divisible, that each moment contains within it the fragments of a thousand others, and each of them can be splintered into a thousand more, and so on and so on. Somewhere then, hidden within these shards of time that occur in the endless instants between the second hand, Cinnabar moved, setting his webbed palm around the pistol at his waist and fanning off two shots. To the subjective observer, however—to Angie and her unfortunate sibling—the salamander’s movements were impossible to follow. Before their brains could process the information gathered by their senses, perhaps even before their senses had recognized the stimulus itself, bits of iron had exploded through their skulls and made either act impossible.

  Celia might have had a chance. Maybe. She was good, and Cinnabar was only flesh. But as she tightened her finger a shot rang out in the distance, and then the youngest Weasel sister was tumbling out the window, dead before she struck the ground.

  Cinnabar slipped his gun back into his holster. He waved at Boudica, or where he assumed Boudica to be. His eyes studied the horizon, open and friendly.

  Chapter 23: A Loud Death Rattle

  A hundred and fifty paces behind the barn a small, pink ball broke through the packed dust of the earth, rising half an inch and hovering for a moment before withdrawing. A few seconds passed and the tip of Gertrude’s nose was joined by the rest of her. She turned quickly and widened out the exit, allowing her much larger companion to join her aboveground.

  Barley stretched to his full height, enjoying the feel of his spine snapping back into place. Then he reached into the hole and withdrew a large black trunk, quite the size of Gertrude herself and, to judge by the grunt the badger gave while lifting it, not filled with feathers.

  Her task completed, Gertrude set to brushing off the grime and dirt that had accumulated during her sojourn beneath the soil. It was an impossible task, but it occupied her time. “I speak seven languages, did you know that?”

  Barley undid the latch on his chest. “I’ll take your word for it.” He opened the trunk, pulled out a tarp, and laid it on the ground beside him. Then he began to remove any number of strange metallic bits, pipes and cylinders and gleaming silver cogs. He inspected each carefully before lining them up on the canvas.

  “Seven languages,” Gertrude confirmed. “My knowledge of mathematics, literature, law, philosophy, poisons, explosives, and espionage are, I think I do myself no exaggerated kindness in saying, second to no one still living within the Gardens.”

  “You’re very clever,” Barley agreed. Having ensured that his inventory was complete, he had turned toward its assembly, hands steady, movement swift. “Everyone thinks so.”

  “And the first thing he has me do—the very first thing—is dig a hole.”

  “What can you say?” he slammed the last piece into place and stood upright, revealing the engine of destruction he had spent the last few moments building. “It’s in our blood.”

  The organ gun was eight wide barrels rotating around a self-feeding cartridge belt. During the War of the Two Brothers the Captain had purchased a handful of them from back east, but they had proved too heavy and unwieldy to be used effectively. Three animals were generally required to operate one gun, and even then it was hard to move, and likely to jam, and only any good for holding a position.

  Barley lifted it up against his chest with a low grunt. He strapped the attached pack of ammo to his back.

  “You still using that absurd contraption?” Gertrude asked, packing an ash-wood pipe with a tuft of fragrant tobacco.

  “No.”

  Gertrude rolled her blind eyes mockingly. “A figment of my imagination.”

  Somewhere ahead of them, hidden by the barn itself, was the crack of a scattergun, followed by another series of shots. The barn door opened suddenly and a rat burst out of it, rifle in hand, a stream of comrades close on his heels.

  Barley waited for the first wave to make it out the exit before he started on his hand crank. The years of inactivit
y had done nothing to diminish the gun’s efficacy, nor the gunner’s expertise. For a full half-minute nothing could be heard over the explosive roar of the cannon. Not the sound of the firing pin hammering home, nor the echo of the spent shells falling against the ground. Not the screams of the rats, tightly packed inside the barn in anticipation of their coming ambush, nor the muted shredding of solid shot passing through their flesh. Not even the groans of the barn itself, whose infrastructure was not built to absorb punishment of the kind it was suffering. Barley raked his fire across the building with the cool deliberateness of a professional, as if this was a routine errand, of no particular interest. The rat who had first broken cover spent a moment held upright by the sheer momentum of the tossed lead, jerking maniacally like a marionette, before collapsing into a torn heap of gristle. One of his comrades hidden in the loft inside managed to ring out a rifle shot, but before a second could be managed Barley compensated, sending a spray of metal through the upper story and silencing any further rejoinders.

  Then it was over, the gun going still, a great mass of corpses left to rot in the noonday sun, or growing cool in the shade of the now ruined barn.

  Gertrude tamped down her pipe. “I suppose they were imagining the same thing.”

  Barley allowed himself a half-smile. “Buncha daydreamers.”

  Barley had been right, that day when the Captain came to see him. There was no one who killed like he did.

  Chapter 24: Best Laid Plans

  After thirty seconds or so the artillery ended. The Captain pulled a cigar from his pocket, lit it, and took a few shallow draws. “You sure?”

  A knock on the door was followed a moment later by Cinnabar’s snout. “Everything all right in here?”

  “Fine,” the Captain said. “Just having a chat.”

  Cinnabar nodded, then retreated back into the afternoon sun.

  The Captain let the cigar smoke pool around his furred face. “Well?” he asked, after a while.

  “Surely you don’t expect me to talk?”

  “More than expect.”

  “My rat did too good a job. I’ll be dead in five minutes, and if you try cutting at me I’m sure I’ll go sooner.”

  “You’ve got too thick a hide to be trying torture in any circumstance,” the Captain said.

  Zapata coughed up something that had more red in it than yellow. “Too kind.”

  “But you’re going to talk to me anyway.”

  “And why would I do that, Captain? Why would I think to help you?”

  “Because you hate Mephetic every bit as much as you hate me. And it’ll do you good, heading off into the next world knowing that one of us is going to kill the other, sure as eggs is eggs.”

  Zapata’s laugh shook his torso violently and unquestionably shortened his life. “Maybe you’ll both go together,” he said, “and I’ll watch you walk into hell arm in arm!”

  The Captain shrugged. Theology was not his strong point. “Maybe.”

  “Give me a shot of whiskey.”

  The Captain got up from his chair, grabbed the jug from off the floor, and laid it beside the soon-to-be corpse. Despite his injury Zapata managed to uncork it and raise it to his lips. Liquor spilled out his belly, along with blood.

  “They’ve got him on a train circling around Santa Theresa, back and forth through no-man’s-land. Had him there ever since they gave him shelter back in aught-six. My people assumed that way the Younger couldn’t make an issue of it, but they still had him on hand in case he ever proved useful. Wait around until you see a train that looks like it shouldn’t be there. That’ll be the one to hit.”

  “All right,” the Captain said simply, standing.

  “You’re a real son of a bitch, you know that?” Zapata said, taking a final drink. “I think maybe I hope Mephetic gets you after all.”

  The Captain didn’t wait to watch him die, didn’t pay him another thought, just opened the door and walked smoothly into the light.

  Chapter 25: That Evening . . .

  They were sitting around the fire when Elf came scuttling into view, awkward gait made more so by the corpse she held in one talon. The assembled party, expecting her arrival, managed to react with less shock than at her first appearance, though with no greater warmth. Most of them had hoped she would catch a bullet at some point during the day’s events.

  Hoped, but not expected. It didn’t do to bet against the Elf.

  She shuffled her way into the light, her one functioning wing speeding her ascent up the hill. When she reached the apex she dropped the dead rat against the sand and began to preen.

  “Howdy, Elf,” the Captain said after a long moment.

  Elf’s sharp beak darted up from her feathers, and she stared at the Captain as if just then recognizing him. “Hello, Captain.” Her pupils, ebony pearls offset in yellow, swiveled across the unfriendly row of faces. “Hello, friends.”

  Cordiality dispensed with, Elf went back to cleaning herself.

  The Captain broke the silence a second time. “Elf.”

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “What’s with the corpse?”

  Elf looked down at her feet and bobbled her head in a sort of half-nod. “Oh. Yes. He was trying to escape. There was another one, but I decided not to bring it.”

  “What possessed you to bring this one?” Bonsoir piped up.

  Elf didn’t respond, though after another moment she looked back up and asked, “Did you receive satisfactory answers?”

  The Captain nodded. “We’re off to Santa Theresa in the morning.”

  “Well and good. I think I’ll take the evening air, before slumber calls me to her bosom.”

  No one said anything for a while. Then the Captain said, “You go ahead and do that.”

  After she had disappeared from the firelight, though likely well before she had left earshot, Bonsoir snorted from his perch. “If I carried every corpse I ever made, I’d be one myself from the weight.”

  “Get rid of it,” the Captain said, turning back to his drink.

  Bonsoir thought about grumbling, but it didn’t do to argue with the Captain. He carried the dead rat a few dozen yards beyond their campsite. They’d be gone before it started to rot.

  Chapter 26: With Less Liquor Than Earlier . . .

  “Coulda been the Dragon,” Barley said. It was him and Boudica and the stoat, and they were drinking quietly a little way out of the firelight.

  “Wasn’t the Dragon,” Boudica answered with some degree of certainty.

  “Why not? I know he goes back a ways with the Captain, but then . . .”

  “What do you remember about that day?”

  “What’s there to remember?” Bonsoir asked. “We’d won, or almost. Just a bit of cleanup left, then it was a long retirement, rolls of gold coin and fetching females. We were in the main room of the keep, drinking like we did every night, and then—”

  “And then our old friends started killing us,” Barley cut in, and you might almost have believed him bitter about it.

  “Where were you when that started to happen?” Boudica asked.

  “Leaking liquor,” Barley said.

  Bonsoir shrugged. “Underneath a table, I suppose. I was so drunk I can barely remember.”

  “If you’d been there”—Boudica pointed at Barley—“and if you’d been sober”—she shifted her finger over to the stoat—“you wouldn’t need to ask.”

  “But I was drunk,” Bonsoir responded, “so you’ll have to tell me.”

  Boudica cocked her head back at the fire, and at the salamander quietly sitting there. “You ever notice, however much he drinks, he never gets drunk? When they came through the door he was the only one sober enough to do anything about it. Put down Alphonze the hedgehog, both of the Squirrel twins. Put them down like they was nothing. If it wasn’t for the Dragon, the Captain would be dead, and I’d be dead, and you’d probably be dead too.”

  They chewed that over for a while. Then Bonsoir spat it back out.
“That proves nothing. The cold-bloods, they aren’t like us. They kill just for the fun of it.”

  “You kill for fun,” Barley responded.

  “Not like he does.”

  “Wasn’t Cinnabar,” Boudica said again, though this time she seemed less certain.

  Chapter 27: With the Jugs Half-Empty . . .

  Barley and Bonsoir were standing a ways out from the main campsite, pissing with the wind.

  “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t me,” Bonsoir said.

  Barley laughed, but he wasn’t.

  Chapter 28: As the Stocks Grew Low . . .

  “I figure it wasn’t the Captain,” Boudica said. “And if it was Gertrude we’d all be dead.”

  “Coulda been Elf,” Bonsoir said.

  “It wasn’t Elf.”

  “No,” Bonsoir agreed. “It wasn’t Elf.”

  Chapter 29: At the Bottom of the Kegs . . .

  “You sure it wasn’t Boudica?” Bonsoir began.

  “Not really,” Barley said.

  “I know who it was.” Neither Bonsoir nor Barley had any idea the owl was there in the moment before she spoke, so perfectly did her feathers blend in with the night, and so utterly silent were her movements. Elf raked them back and forth with eyes that were like talons. “I do,” she said, before hobbling back off into the darkness.

  Bonsoir turned back to the badger. “I believe her.”

  “Me too.”

  Chapter 30: A Smoke Before Sleep

  It was just the two of them, as it often was lately, as it had been in the past. The fire had burned down to its embers, and the night had overtaken everything. Cinnabar lit a cigarette and handed it off to Gertrude, then started rolling another. “Were you surprised?”

  “When they betrayed us?”