Nev had his fist in his own wound, pressing hard to staunch blood that flowed free as a spring rill, pumping across his breast with every heartbeat. He used his other hand to claw himself towards the sounds of the dying men. Not to save them – no – not to help them – no – but because he hoped they were not quite as doomed as he. He hoped they carried six more breaths instead of his two. He wanted to become them, to steal the last of their conscious moments, to take harbor within their mangled, broken bodies and mend them with the fire of his corpse-jumping soul. He had to find a form that would house his soul for another day, another hour, another breath, until he could jump again, and again, into his promised immortality.
But for now, in this moment – Nev needed just one more breath.
And he did not have it.
That’s when he heard the little girl singing.
Nev’s life after that day in that bloody field, after the war, after he fled the guild that once protected his immortal soul from superstitious mind clerics and osteomancers, was no easier. No matter how far he ran, or how many times he changed his face, Nev could not escape his past, and the sound of the little girl singing while he bled out. His old masters would inevitably find him and remind him of his obligations to the Body Mercenary Guild. They knew what sort of person he really was. They knew what had happened on the field that day.
They knew about the girl.
And what he had given her.
#
“Name and occupation?”
“Nevarius Plum,” Nev said, and not for the first time, he felt the urge to say he was a scribe, or perhaps a tax clerk, because it seemed so fitting to the current name he used. Body mercenaries like him should have had names that inspired fear and awe in the presence of the foes whose faces they would soon wear. But names didn’t always make a person, however much weight they gave on first impression. He had once known a man in the guild called Torgenson Bold. Torg perished on the field during his first skirmish, screaming and blubbering like a colicky newborn babe.
It wasn’t about the name – it was about the soul. Nev chose names that reflected the soul he wanted to show the world. The soul he aspired to.
“And occupation?” the squat woman repeated, sweating heavily behind the smooth wooden counter of the mud brick toll gate that flanked the main road into the city of Avarise. The tattered coil of fabric above her did not give much shade in the muggy heat, and the sun was high and hot. Most of the toll booth operators at the gates to the city were men. He considered asking her if she knew of an open position among them, grasping for an alternative to the summons from his guild masters, then shuddered at the idea of touching and speaking to so many people every day.
Too much temptation.
He could have said, “I’m a member of the Body Mercenary Guild,” but his kind were hated everywhere, here more than most; here they were routed out and run down. He had not been in contact with anyone from the guild since that day in the field, some seventy years ago, though he could still feel them, pursuing.
It’s why he needed to make this trip.
“I am a simple trader,” he said, “with goods to take to market.”
“Doesn’t mean you get in for free. You are showing very little respect.”
He bowed. “I apologize. Please, examine my wares and let us agree on a fee.”
Nev had learned that apologies and passive subservience cost him nothing in exchanges with those who fed on the power afforded their own little fiefdom. No doubt this woman enjoyed making visitors like him wait outside the gates indefinitely if they crossed her. Petty, counter-productive… but human beings were not rational. A hard lesson. Logic did not convince people to come over to one’s position. One had to appeal to their emotions, egos, and desires. That had taken Nev many bodies’ worth of lives to learn properly.
He brought his lop-eared alpaca forward and divulged the contents of her plump saddle bags. Hunks of volcanic glass shimmered. Nev gingerly picked up a chunk and offered it to the woman.
She took six pieces for herself, and one of the bronze bands he wore on his fingers for just such a bribe. Her ego assuaged, he passed into the city without further issue.
Avarise hugged the riverbank of the crushing gray wash of the River Monesi, a bloated, fast-moving breadth of water prone to lose its banks each year and overtake the stilted homes in the flood valley on the other side. The city proper loomed above the great river, tucked securely on a hill dug by thousands of hands for just this purpose. It afforded citizens not only a view of potential trouble, but safety from the river’s wrath.
Nev climbed up the narrow cobbled streets. Flat pavers at the center of the way were for the carts; the knobby pebbled paths on either side were for hoofed creatures who would have found the flatter way far more treacherous. The alpaca, with her soft padded feet, was content to tread next to him, though as he glanced at her two-toed feet he made a note that her nails needed trimming.
He consulted the little map in his pocket several times. Like many cities formed in the early days of the last empire, the streets were a hodgepodge of dead-ends and narrow alleys that sometimes opened briefly into airy plazas, then closed and pinched again, running down and down to some sewer grate or back up and up again only to bring him to the battered calcified door of some private residence.
After several bad turns, he finally came to the residence he sought, a pleasant little first-floor apartment with the family name “Clovanis” set in tile next to the threshold. Bursts of lovely pink flowers sprouted from window pots. Potted palms and heart-shaped snaking vines grew in the small yard just to the right of the door, a rare, narrow band of open space. An old woman sat out there, lean and regal, slightly hunched over a swath of fabric. At the rear of the garden, an unfinished canvas lay dashed in spots of color meant to mimic the flower boxes.
Nev came to the little courtyard gate. “Pardon, matron,” he said, “Are you Matild Clovanis?”
“I am.
“Nev Plum,” he said. “I’ve brought the volcanic glass from Magoransa.”
“Of course, please, come. I didn’t expect you to be so young! What a journey you must have had.”
She rose, smiling. Her white hair was nested into an intricate knot of strands bound in multicolored ribbon. She did not walk with a cane; she moved swiftly, for all her years, and the sun-hardened lines of her face.
“I don’t have many visitors from so far away. Let me get you tea. We have clover tea! And biscuits.”
“You are very kind.”
Matild bustled into her home, though he noted she did not invite him in. Nev knotted the alpaca’s lead at the table and began to unload his stones.
When Matild returned, she chatted absently about the weather, then asked about his journey.
“Uneventful,” he said, but he shared details he supposed she would enjoy, about the people, the scenery, a scrappy young dog who ran off with the last of his jerky, a child with a voice like a bell, and news of a small settlement lost to a storm said to strike from a clear sky.
Matild exclaimed over the volcanic glass. “I have so many more buyers,” she said, which he already knew, because he had posed as one of them not long back. “But alas, not as much coin as I’d hoped in exchange.”
“I’m sure there are other bits and bobs I could settle for.” Nev pretended to give a longer look at the surroundings, the hanging vegetation, blooming purple flowers up on the roof, aged brick walls; the bird poking its vibrant orange head from a nest snugged tightly in the mouth of a tentacled nightmare meant to cover the otherwise inelegant appearance of a drain.
Nev drew a broken trinket from his pocket and placed it on the table between them. A blue stone shot through with green glass. “Have you ever come across a stone like this one? I’d be very keen to find one intact. I collect them.”
The woman brushed the bits of stone with her fingertips. “I had something like it, a very long time ago.”
> “And now?”
“I’m afraid I don’t have it anymore.”
“You sold it?”
“I simply don’t have it.”
“I suppose that’s best. Those who carry intact stones can be in danger. Some… bad people are looking for intact stones.”
“But you aren’t one of the bad ones?”
“I don’t like to think I am.”
She leaned back in her seat. “I’m an old woman. There’s very little you or they can do to me. I’ve seen the world and lived a good life.”
Nev’s stomach twisted. He did not like to use fear, but in this instance, the tactic was warranted, and terribly true. “Perhaps you could tell me what happened to it. If I can have something to go on, I’m even happy to leave extra with your religious order. Whichever you subscribe to.”
“My mother sold it, a very long time ago.”
“You know where?”
“A company creditor, I imagine. She made a living in the ironworks. I was twelve or thirteen, then. Fifty-three years on, now. In the summer. I remember the sound of the cicadas.”
“Could I speak –” Nev stopped himself. He knew better than to ask, but it slipped out sometimes, his assumption that everyone lived forever.
“She passed some years ago.” The woman’s attention shifted. She seemed to re-evaluate him.
I’ve shown my hand, he thought. She knows.
“You should speak with grand-daughter,” she said, flicking her gaze up to the squawking bird in the drain. “She is very good at finding things.”
“It’s all right, I –”
“Nice young man like you. This is a very dangerous place, you understand? She could help you. You may not look foreign, but your accent is archaic, and you are… odd.”
“Perhaps I’m not as nice as I look.”
“I very much doubt that.”
Nev stood. He unloaded a few more stones from the alpaca’s saddle bag. “Thank you for your help.”
“Give me your map,” she said. “I can show you where my grand-daughter is.” She peered at the angle of the sun. “Yes, this time of day I know where she’ll be.”
“That’s kind,” he said, “but I really do prefer to work alone.”
The old woman tugged at the map, though, pulling it from the table before he could snatch it up. She traced a section of the city about a half a mile back down the other side of the city, right up along the river front. “The Wandering Eye,” she said, and chuckled. “That’s where she’ll be. Ask for Mezelda.”
“Thank you.” Nev tucked the map back into his pocket. He hurried away, dropping his gaze, not wanting to look back.
But she spoke again, a line from a very old tune, one he had had long ago tried to banish from his memory:
Come little Jini in your flying machine
Come across the waves with me
Those golden waves, Jini
Those golden waves.
Nev glanced back, just the once. Met her look. Tipped his hat, and then he and the alpaca were back in the square, drifting among the other residents, trudging deeper and deeper through the maze, the map forgotten, wanting only to disappear into the twisting labyrinth of Avarise forever.
#
Nev went down to the ironworks first. The pawn broker there was young; he asked after the former proprietor, and celebrated his luck when the girl trotted into the back and came out with her mother. When he presented the stone, the old woman did not recall it, but her records went back a hundred years, she said, and for a few bronze rings, she put her daughter to work combing through the records from fifty-three years prior, in the summer months.
The girl brought out the big book and after reading a dozen pages, found the entry he sought.
“Oh yes, this family,” the old woman said. “The wizards. I didn’t realize that stone sat here so long. Bad buy, bad buy. Fifty years to turn around a trinket! Terrible.”
“Wizards?”
“Yes. I remember her, Bafasa Mundi. She came looking for a good luck stone. The green crystal soothed her. It was for her son. I recall her because they left the city a few months ago, after their youngest passed the wizard trials, and well… he was chosen for temple work. And you know what happens to children, especially boy children, chosen for such a fate.”
Nev did not. “Do you know where they went?”
“No, no. I’m sure no one does. They left in the middle of the night. The fewer they told, the better their chances of escape. A shame, really.”
Nev thanked them for the help and wrote Bafasa Mundi on the back of his map. As he did, his gaze went to the tavern along the waterfront. The Wandering Eye. It was true that he did not know these people, and they had no reason to trust him. He was also almost out of volcanic glass and bronze rings. Too much more of this and he would be broke, and no closer to the stone than when he started.
He reasoned that if it was difficult for him to find the stone, it would be equally difficult for the Body Mercenary Guild. Perhaps he was being overly anxious. Overly cautious. But it was this extra care that had ensured his freedom and survival over these many long decades. To turn away now…
Nev sighed and patted his alpaca. “Long way to come for nothing, right?”
The alpaca hummed.
They began the long way down to the water.
#
The wharf smelled of copper and death, a combination that Nev had not yet encountered. The churning gray waters carried detritus from upstream; broken trees, dead animals, silt runoff, but from the smell, less sewage than he would have suspected. Avarice lay close enough to the headwaters that it was the first major city on the river’s wending path.
The Wandering Eye lay furthest upstream, closest to the boat docks.
Nev’s body was not terribly tall, but he had to stoop to enter the low doorway. He removed his hat. Inside; darkness, and the cloying stink of old sweat and cheap spilled beer. Beneath that, the whiff of aged cedar and hardened leather. Outside was hot; inside was much hotter, almost unbearable.
Three women collected at a table in the back. A barkeep spoke in low tones to a patron at the smooth cedar plank of the bar. Sounds of raucous laughing in the back could have been the cook staff or a gambling den.
Nev kept his head down and went to the bar, asked the beefy bar keep, “Excuse me? I’m looking for Mezelda?”
The barkeep rolled her eyes. Jerked her thumb at the hefty, heavy-lidded woman she spoke to. The woman bent over a gravy-soaked potato dish and what remained of a thick, frothy black beer.
“Good to know you have my back if the dock patrol comes calling,” the woman said, wiping her face on her sleeve. Her voice was rich and smoky; it put Nev in mind of another mercenary he once knew, long dead on the same field that had nearly claimed him.
“He’s definitely not dock patrol,” the barkeep said, and laughed. The table in the back called for another round. She went to the tap to satisfy them.
“Mezelda, I’m Nev. Your grandmother said you find people. Things.” Nev guessed Mezelda was in her late thirties, maybe early forties. He had found it difficult to judge the ages of those from cultures he was not yet accustomed to. It wasn’t so much that the age markers differed, it was that the way bodies aged was so intrinsically tied to their lineage, their daily work, their habits, and above all, their environments.
“Mez,” she said. “Nobody calls me Mezelda but grandma. You have money?”
“I have some volcanic glass, a few bronze –”
Mez help up her hand. “Forget it.”
“Surely there’s some other –”
Mez nodded at the noise from the back. “Tell you what. Beat me at a game of cards, I’ll hear your sob story. I win, I clean you out.”
“This… does not seem like a deal a sane man would take. Thank you for your time.”
Nev put his hat back on and trudged to the door.
“Who you looking for?
” Mez called.
“A boy. A wizard. His family left here some time ago. He has something I’m looking for. Your grandmother had it at one time, but her mother pawned it away. She said you could help”
“Why ask for my help? Do you not like wizards?
“They’re fine.”
“So you don’t like children?”
When pressed, he always preferred honesty. Fewer things to remember. “I’m never certain how to treat them. Many parents take offense if I speak to a child as I would an adult. Should I treat a child as half human? Part animal? Does the percentage of their humanity change based on age? Is there a sliding scale?”
“I find children amusing.” Mez gulped her beer. “I once told my nephew that griffins weren’t extinct, just nocturnal. He loudly proclaimed this fact to his professor. It delighted me to no end.”
“You must have lost his trust.”
“I taught him critical thinking. He was, like, four.”
“You taught him adults are liars.”
“Is that untrue? Now he asks for a second opinion when I tell him anything. How many kids just believe whatever nonsense their Aunt Edna spouted off after she heard it from a grocer? The world would be a better place if we all questioned our elders more.”
“You advocate for disrespect?”
“Who do you think I am? A priest?”
“I… need to find someone else. You aren’t the right person for this.”
She chomped a hunk of potato; a bit of gravy leaked out the side of her mouth. “Figured,” she mumbled around the potato. “Grandma sends me particular kinds of people.” Her gaze narrowed; black eyes, long lashes. Like her grandmother, she seemed to see through him. I’m being paranoid, Nev thought.
“I’m not keen on games,” Nev said.
“And I’m not keen on working with someone I don’t know.”
“I prefer my independence as well.”
“Independence rarely gets me paid. Come out back.”
Her followed her to a scuffed table out on the patio. Here, it was cooler; a blessed breeze came in off the boiling river below. Mez set out a deck of cards; already a bad sign. Playing with her own deck meant it was likely marked. Did he look so young that she thought he would fall for that? Young, a foreigner… maybe so.
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