Bounty

by Harper Alexander

  A spark of irritation abruptly absorbed the raging sea he was wallowing in. Sometimes all the despair went past overwhelming and, as if jaded, tipped him over into something entirely more shallow. The despair became suddenly not worth its own weight in grief, and he became only annoyed with it. It was the only way he could find relief, he supposed; his body taking over and providing a mental block where he was unable to guard himself anymore. It was hard to guard yourself against what was aspiring to thrive inside you – the only way to achieve such a thing was to conceal it, to give in to a mood and fool yourself with it.

  Godren’s absentminded emotional rampage had taken him through a rough completion of scouting the Ruins, and, having not found anything, he surfaced to the edges and stood surveying the proximity. Did any bounty hunters hover in waiting here on the outskirts? Nothing stirred as he gave the area a calculating once-over. Supposing he was satisfied, he turned to find his way back.

  A shimmering flicker disturbed the air before him, and he dedicated his attention to it immediately. By the time he looked up, Alice was standing there. Right there.

  Godren did not leap back, as was his initial impulse, but he had a knife out and in his aimed hand before he realized he had reached for it. Gods, his reflexes had gotten incredible. It almost scared him, so unexpected was the appearance of a weapon.

  Alice just stared into his face, eyes keen and penetrating, pupils widening as her nostrils flared.

  “Insensitive for a god,” she observed. “You ought not let yerself be snuck up on, lovey.”

  Oh no – another episode of enduring her mannerisms. That inconvenience occurred to him before the chance to bring her in did.

  “Madam,” he acknowledged flatly, wondering what he should do. Was there a way to handle her?

  “Can’t tell me t’ clear out this time,” Alice boasted. “I’m cleverly free o’ yer jurisdiction, yes I am.”

  “I wouldn’t be so accommodating this time,” Godren replied, staying stoic.

  “No?” A curious impulse sparked in her eyes, and she experimentally shifted her wooden leg past an imaginary line that would have marked the boundary of the Ruins’ commencement. A delighted gleam in her eyes dared him to show her the consequences of being so bold.

  Godren glanced stonily at her extended appendage, and stonily back at her. He said nothing.

  “Well, yer no fun, are you?” Alice pouted.

  “Now, Alice,” a new voice said disapprovingly, and a figure moved closer out of the corner of Godren’s eye. “Don’t be too hard on him; he’s new and still takes his job a little too seriously.”

  That voice. Godren knew that voice. He couldn’t quite place it, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off of Alice lest she pull another disappearing act and be gone as swiftly as the first time.

  Alice glanced at the newcomer, and then considered Godren in a new light. “More than seriously, I’d say,” she observed, and her face scrunched into an expression halfway between sympathetic and mocking. “You look weathered. Are the elements plaguing you, dearie? Let ol’ mother cripple give you a hint: in this manner o’ storm, ye must grab the elements by th’ horns.”

  “One does not ‘grab’ wind, Alice,” the un-named character pointed out – and in that moment, Godren identified him. That eloquent way of speaking – it was Damious’s.

  “Oh but one must,” Alice insisted, disregarding Godren’s knife to turn and face the other man.

  “One can’t,” Damious stressed patiently, coming casually closer.

  “Oh, Damious, don’t be so disagreeably literal. One must become the elements then,” she revised over her shoulder for Godren’s benefit. “An’ surely, as a god, ye can contrive to do that.”

  “Well, that’s sound enough advice,” Damious allowed. “And really, you can’t be picky about where the good advice comes from, when you can’t trust anyone. Better to take it how it is. And that itself, my boy, is a very good piece of advice all its own. Trust me.”

  Godren wrapped his mind around the twisted psychological implications of Damious’s words, recalling how much the other man enjoyed irony.

  “If you want to play, Alice,” Damious remarked, “I can arrange that. Godren here can tag along and learn the rules.”

  “If he can keep up,” Alice agreed with a wicked gleam in her eye, and then she disappeared.

  This time, it was right before his eyes.

  “Rule number one,” Damious said in perfectly good humor, “She gets to disappear.”

  “Come on, boys!” an impatient call came from down the alley, and an invisible force sent a flurry of garbage scraps astir. “Look smart an’ track these footprints, before I bore o’ yer pursuit.”

  “Rule number two – she gets to taunt us. Other than that, there aren’t many rules – just a few personal preferences, that…typically clash.”

  “Like you catching her and her getting away?” Godren asked.

  Damious beamed. “Good! You won’t need a tutor.”

  Directing his keen attention toward his eager, elusive prey, Damious shifted over to allow Godren to fall in beside him. Taking advantage of the opportunity to work together, Godren moved into perspective next to his unlikely accomplice and tuned his senses to their sharpest extent. He didn’t expect to be any more likely to detect invisible quarry, but it was the best precaution he could take.

  At least he had learned, he supposed, that the crippled bounty hunter didn’t actually blink out of the existing area, but merely faded from sight. That was progress.

  “I thought you said she only lights candles with her fingers and deters insects,” Godren murmured.

  “She does. With her own abilities.”

  Glancing at him, Godren wondered over the implications of that. “What does that mean?”

  “It means she’s a thief as well as a bounty hunter. Doesn’t invisibility strike any familiar nerves?”

  Now that he mentioned it, it did nag at him, but he couldn’t say precisely why. “She steals magic?” he prompted naïvely, trying to keep Damious talking.

  This time, Damious looked at him. “You don’t know, do you?”

  Suddenly Godren felt like an ignorant whelp. No, he didn’t know.

  “Tell me, do Xinna’s servants walk about in the open, or have you seen them at all?”

  Something began to connect in the back of Godren’s mind. Should it have occurred to him before? “They aren’t ghosts, are they?”

  Damious grinned. “Indeed not. It was a good rumor, though. But no, the ghosts and the staff are one and the same, and they are not ghosts.”

  “Just servants. Kept out of sight by Mastodon? Or invisible by their own power?” Evantralis and her ‘shadow of magic’ came back to him. Mastodon had mentioned her magic exclusively, though. Perhaps she filled the position of chief of staff, and managed the others’ semblances?

  “Not servants,” Alice’s sharp rasp rang down on them from above. “Slaves.”

  No sooner did they look up in reaction than a shower of sand cascaded down from some source atop the wall, hissing as it rained down on top of them.

  Protecting their eyes, they ducked uselessly against the onslaught and came up coughing and covering their faces.

  “What was that?” Godren asked as the dust was clearing.

  “That was how I was going to catch her,” Damious replied, dismayed. “I altered one of your traps. Had she triggered it, the dust would have clung to her profile.”

  And made her visible

  “She doesn’t miss much, though.” He laughed. “She probably stood right there and watched me set it up.”

  “How does she scale the walls?” Godren wanted to know, thinking of her wooden leg.

  Damious shrugged. “She’s agile.”

  Feeling more and more like a green dimwit all the time, Godren squinted through the last fine layer of dust.

  “Godforsaken, wretched slaves,” Alice’s voice echoed down to them from somewhere down the wall. Godren a
nd Damious went still to listen, trying to pinpoint her location. “Kept out o’ sight, o’ course. Oh the treachery, enslavin’ other human lives. How do ye think she smuggles ’em out o’ their home countries? It’s easy, when no one sees ’em.”

  “If we can corner her on the wall, she’ll have no place to go,” Damious murmured.

  “There’s no place to come down until the next crossway,” Godren realized aloud, recalling the details of the system he had designed. Then he bolted. Agile Alice may have been, but he could assuredly outrun her. He put faith in Damious doing his own part without needing to be told, and left him to hurry up the wall by whatever nearby means Alice had used.

  Pumping himself into a flying sprint, Godren tore down the alley toward the shadowed intersection, working his numb muscles with all he had to pour into them. He was not going to underestimate Alice, regardless of the speed he should naturally hold above her. She was full of surprises, and sometimes he wondered if her peg leg wasn’t an illusion of some sort to throw off those who would appraise and threaten her.

  Skidding onto the sequestered crossroads, Godren slid recklessly around and raced up the rope access onto the wall. Catching his balance in a crouch at the top, he drew himself up and triumphantly faced the empty significance. In the distance, a silhouette made its way toward him. Surely they had her. There was no way she could have outrun him crippled and precarious, and climbed down before he got there.

  Inevitably, though, he began to second-guess such an easy victory. Alice would never go down so foolishly, would she? Then again, she had probably thought she was being clever unleashing Damious’s own trap on them, and maybe that’s as far as she had thought. After all, pulling something clever and unexpected put her ahead.

  Godren’s skin prickled – a phantom prickle, he concluded before he could get excited – as he and Damious drew close. If Alice was between them, she was as good as sandwiched now.

  “Yes, Alice,” Damious addressed the space between them. “Slaves. Shackled with collars of invisibility. Terrible collars that no one can remove save the captor who fastens them.”

  “But they aren’t impossible to attain, no not quite,” Alice boasted, materializing. “It only takes puttin’ one o’ them out o’ their misery.” In demonstration, she ran a finger quickly along her throat.

  “Clever Alice,” Damious awarded. “Attain such tools of evasion you did. But the glory days have lost their charm. For here we are.”

  Alice spat over the edge of the wall, and turned to face Damious. Godren marveled at how she handled her wooden limb with such ease.

  “You think I won’t jump if you come closer?” the woman challenged.

  Instead of responding, a long coil of whip snaked out of Damious’s sleeve and lashed out to bind one of Alice’s wrists. Damious hadn’t so much as flicked his wrist, and the woman was snared.

  “I don’t think so.”

  The crazy amusement gave way to smoldering displeasure as Alice inspected her wrist. As it sunk in, she glared at Damious. She made as if to swipe out a blade with her other hand and cleave the lashing in two, but Damious produced another snare and caught her in the act.

  “It’s time to retire, Alice,” he said. “We’ve progressed to a new age, and there’s no place in this business for die-hard, peg-legged stragglers. You’re to be commended for your efforts and achievements – have no fear, you’ll be remembered in the dark pages of history. I doubt if any other could have proven as capable…as resourceful as you have. It has certainly been a pleasure humoring you.”

  Godren couldn’t see her face, but the way her shoulders rose and fell with increasing passion gave away her rising resentment. Suddenly she began struggling, yanking on her bonds as if determined to break away or take Damious off the wall with her. He was much too solid, though – indeed, more so than he appeared – and anchored himself in place.

  Alice, however, succeeded in ripping her balance way out of proportion, increasingly beyond salvage, and it was only a matter of time before she lost it completely and teetered, restricted arms flailing, and then careened over the edge. Damious dropped to brace himself, but Alice was small and didn’t prove to be a dangerous burden. She merely fell the length of her tethers and sent a jolt through his hold, and then the action stilled.

  Damious glanced over the edge. “Looks like she hit her head on the wall,” he observed. “Well, at least she’ll go quietly.”

  “I’ll go down and receive her,” Godren offered.

  “And run off with my prize?”

  Meeting his eyes with a look halfway between offended and dismissive, Godren turned to proceed. “I still have questions,” he assured the other man.

  Damious made no further protests, and held Alice there until Godren was in place for her to be lowered to the ground. After her unconscious form was safely retrieved, Damious joined him.

  “Well then, since I’m available for consultation, what would you like to know?”

  “About the collars. And the slaves.” Trying to keep the grave weariness out of his voice, Godren looked to the assassin for more details.

  “Well,” Damious began, collecting his knowledge, “the slaves are Xinna’s greatest cause of success. She started smaller, smuggling illegal substances and priceless artifacts – that type of thing. Because of her magic, and specialty in invisibility, she was always grossly successful, but it wasn’t until she began smuggling lives that she mastered a new level of accomplishment entirely. It’s brought her a legendary fortune, but the practice itself, the source of that prosperity, she keeps under wraps. Why stop at getting them over the border undetected when she can run the entire operation without anyone so much as suspecting?”

  Godren took that in, and stared grimly at Damious. “She’s a slave trader?” A disturbing memory returned to him, one he had mostly managed to block from the recurring tide that passed though his mind: that of a noise coming from one gypsy-tranferred chest, found empty upon inspection. The connection fell into place like a grim lock – but whether in revelation, or confirmation, he could not say.

  “Does that surprise you?”

  Why should it? Of course Mastodon kept slaves – it was the obvious, ultimate commodity to smuggle – and it was only natural that she sell them, too. Hadn’t he become as good as a slave himself?

  “She said they offered blood to her, surrendering to her control, to demonstrate their loyalty,” he commented absently.

  “Don’t tell me you trust Xinna.”

  Godren only glanced at him in response.

  “She said they volunteered for the leeches, ay? Well that’s armadillo poo. They have no say, Godren. No say at all. Now, Xinna isn’t an overly cruel mistress; she’s actually quite hospitable – which you might have found – just ruthless if defied. Who’s to say about the other masters they go to, though.”

  “What of the collars? How do they work?”

  “They can’t be undone once fastened, except by the sorcerer who locked them. They can be attained by other means – namely beheading of the wearer – as Alice bears proof to. Basically, they grant the wearer invisibility, or camouflage, which can be controlled by either the wearer or the responsible sorcerer. Ultimately, of course, the sorcerer’s control dominates that of the host, so the slaves can be corrected if they choose to appear at an unacceptable time. If the collars are dislodged and taken up by an alternate character, their magical qualities cannot be unlocked unless the one in possession bears magic – such as Alice does.”

  “One of the slaves came to me – appeared to me,” Godren said. “If Mastodon would rather keep them a secret entirely, why would she allow that?”

  Shrugging, Damious considered him. “What was the reason that you were approached?”

  “I was…injured while out in the alleys. She came to heal me.”

  “Well perhaps, Godren, you are valuable enough to Xinna that she has extended some measures of looking after you, and maybe she didn’t want you asking questions a
bout the deliverance of invisible aid,” Damious suggested. “As it was, she just passed the aide off as one of her servants, did she not?”

  “She did.”

  Then Damious got a look on his face. “Or… Did she name the servant?”

  “Evantralis. She said she possessed a trace of magic.”

  “Aye. She does. I don’t know the specifics, but that could also counter some of the control.”

  Godren frowned curiously. “Evantralis had to bleed me of poison, with leeches. Mastodon explained her plentiful supply as the leeches being attracted to the sweet taste of magic in the bloodstream. Is that true?”

  Turning thoughtful, Damious scratched his neck. “It is,” he granted, “but that really only prompts them sticking to her once they’re placed. Xinna would have to apply them, and I imagine it’s necessary because it takes more blood to control someone more powerful. That is, someone who possesses magic.”

  One more question burned on the tip of Godren’s tongue, but dread for the answer stayed his hand. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know. Hesitating, he removed his gaze from contact with Damious’s, and let his eyes fall to Alice as he weighed the benefits of asking with the risks of knowing. Arranged on the ground like she was, he could see where Alice kept the slave collar secured around the stump of her bad leg.

  “Is…is there no way to escape her control, once she has your blood?” he dared, deciding he had to know whether he wanted to or not.

  Releasing a transitional grunt, Damious unsettled himself from the stance of their chat and hoisted Alice over a shoulder. “Does she have your blood aside from where it graces a contract with your signature?” he wanted to know, preparing to leave.