by Paul S. Kemp
Desperate, Nix wriggled his foot in his boot, loosened it just enough, and slipped free of it just as the other automaton snatched at him, its fingertips grazing his free foot. He used the joist to pull himself up out of their reach.
“A shirt, my cloak, and now a fakking boot? You slubbers are hard on attire!”
“You don’t know what you’re doing, Nix. Give me those plates!”
Figures appeared at the end of the alley mouths, curious pedestrians trying to figure out what had happened. The Watch would be coming soon. The automatons looked up at him, dead eyes fixed on his satchel.
“Tell me what they are,” Nix demanded. He burped and winced—Gadd’s fakkin’ stew was a ghost that would haunt him forever.
“I can’t,” said Kerfallen through the mouth of the maimed automaton. “And you wouldn’t understand anyway.”
“Then I’ll keep them and you owe me a boot and a shirt,” Nix said, and started climbing. “And a cloak. And whatever else I decide to extract in payment for the damned inconvenience of running down the street! Where am I supposed to buy my enchanted items now?”
The automatons watched him ascend for a moment, then spread out in either direction, perhaps hoping to cut him off or perhaps returning to their master’s manse or the bazaar. Nix had no idea how Kerfallen could control all three of them simultaneously. It had to be taxing the wizard’s abilities. In any event, Nix knew he was free of them for the moment. They couldn’t climb and he knew the Thieves’ Highway as well as anyone in Dur Follin.
And now he knew another thing: The plates were valuable and a wizard wanted them.
He and Egil had their adventure.
The distant whistles of the Watch sounded from the street below.
He took off his other boot, finding it too awkward to have one and not the other, grinning as he traversed the rooftops on his way back to Shoddy Way and the Slippery Tunnel. He periodically checked the streets below to ensure he wasn’t followed by the automatons. If Kerfallen didn’t already know that he and Egil lodged at the Tunnel, the wizard would find out soon enough; he and Egil didn’t keep their ownership of the brothel a secret. Nix didn’t think the wizard would send his minions after them at the Tunnel in the broad light of day, but then no such scruples had kept him from attacking Nix in the Low Bazaar and pursuing him down the street. And of course night would be another thing altogether.
Nix figured he and Egil would have some time, but perhaps not much. They’d need a place to hole up. And then he needed to figure out what in the Pits the plates actually were.
Nix turned his mind to it as he scaled down the wall into an alley near Shoddy Way, cursing the wizard anew when the coarse bricks scraped the skin of his toes.
When Nix reached the Tunnel—barefoot, in a torn shirt, and without his cloak—the working day was well under way. Gadd stood behind the bar, a priest of tankards and ale. A dozen or more patrons sat at the tables or milled about the room. Two serving girls carried trays and Tesha’s working men and women stood their posts on the stairs or moved suggestively through the room, wooing those who showed interest. Gadd took in Nix’s missing boots and torn shirt and looked a question at him as Nix went past the bar and into the back.
“All’s well,” Nix said to him. “Or maybe not. I’ll let you know in a bit.”
He went down the back stairs to the room Egil typically used at the Tunnel and rapped on the door.
It had been only an hour or two since Egil had gone for some sleep and a growl answered Nix’s knock.
“I see you’re speaking with your usual articulateness,” Nix called. “Time to wake.”
“No. Go away.”
Nix looked down the hall both ways to ensure no one was near enough to overhear. He leaned in and said, “The minions of a wizard are coming after us.”
Some rustling from through the door. “After us, after us?”
“Aye.”
“What time is it?” Egil asked.
“What? I don’t know. Still morning.”
“Gods, Nix. It’s still morning and you already got us sideways of a wizard? That seems unlikely even for you.”
“Well…it’s late morning,” Nix said defensively. “Almost afternoon, really. And I can get us sideways of anyone with great speed.”
“That’s true enough,” the priest said. More rustling. The creak of the floor.
“Get dressed and meet me in the common room,” Nix said. “I’ll fill you in. And bring your hammers.”
“Aye, that,” Egil called.
Nix turned to go and saw Gadd’s towering silhouette at the top of the stairs.
“Trouble?” Gadd asked as Nix ascended the stairs.
“Maybe,” Nix said. “Wizard shite, is what. I don’t think it’ll come here, but keep that tulwar handy. And I need to get some boots and blades, a new cloak, and a few needful things from my room.”
“Gewgaws!” Egil shouted from the other side of the door.
“How could he even hear that?” Nix said to Gadd, who shrugged. “Listen, Gadd, whatever you heard, keep it between the three of us for now, yeah?”
Gadd gave him a long look but nodded.
“Good man.”
—
Later, rearmed and fitted with a spare pair of boots and a new shirt, Nix sat at the bar with Egil. He’d rewrapped the plates in the concealing blanket and bore them in his satchel. The business of the Tunnel went on as normal. Nix knew Kerfallen was capable of crafting constructs that were almost indistinguishable from a person, so he closely watched the patrons who came and went—not many, since the Tunnel’s business picked up in late afternoon and early evening. All seemed in order.
Nix caught the priest up on the morning’s events. Gadd listened, too, though he made as though he were just tending his cups.
After listening to Nix’s story, Egil ran a hand over the eye of Ebenor. “I don’t think he’ll come at us here. You?”
“He might, but if he does I don’t think it’ll be soon.”
Egil nodded. “What are you thinking, then? That we go at him first?”
Nix shook his head. “I wasn’t thinking that, no. He is a wizard.”
“So? We’re a priest of a one-man faith and a wizard school dropout.”
“Ha! And I was expelled.”
Egil leaned forward in his stool, cracking his knuckles, visibly warming to the thought of violence. “I’m serious. You wanted to get our reputations back. Let’s go burn his fakking mansion down, drag his small-statured self into the street, and make him apologize for chasing you up a roof.”
Gadd poured them both an ale, giving Nix a moment to gather his thoughts. Nix nodded at the Easterner in gratitude.
“That’s one idea,” Nix said carefully. “And sounds appealing, I’ll grant. But—”
“But?” Egil asked, and slammed the entirety of the ale Gadd had just given him. He signaled for another.
“But we should consider—”
Something crashed through the leaded glass windows on the Shoddy Way side of the Tunnel, spraying glass and eliciting a shout and curse from the patrons at the table nearby. One of the working girls exclaimed in surprise. Heads turned. A few patrons stood. A chair toppled. One of the patrons near the window lurched over and looked out on the street for the culprit, cursing the vandal prophylactically.
“Don’t see anyone,” the man said.
Nix slipped off his stool, his hand on the hilt of his blade. Egil did the same, hand on one of his hammers.
“What the fak was that?” one of the patrons called. “A stone?”
Another window on the other side of the building shattered as something flew through it, too. The serving girl screamed again. Everyone stood or looked about in alarm. Behind Nix, Gadd growled.
“What is that?” said a man, standing from his chair and leaning over to look at the fist-sized round object that had broken the window. “It’s metal.”
“What is going on?” Tesha called from the landing at
the top of the stairs. “Nix?”
“Patrons outside, right now!” Nix said, drawing his sword and pointing at the doors with its tip. “All my people get upstairs to your rooms and stay there!”
No one moved. Several looked at him as if he were mad.
“What is this, Nix?” Tesha asked.
“Tesha, tell them to do as I said!” Nix said.
She glared at him but did as he asked. She must have heard the urgency in his tone. “Everyone upstairs!” she shouted. “You, too, Gadd. Right now. To your rooms. No one comes down until Nix says so.”
“Move!” Egil bellowed, and thumped his hammer on a table. That broke the dam.
The working girls and men rushed upstairs, crowding the staircase as they went. As Lis passed one of the objects, she said, “This thing is vibrating, Nix.”
“Don’t touch it,” Nix said. “Go!”
Something flew through another window, another. The objects landed on the floor and rolled until they hit a wall or table leg. They looked like fist-sized metal balls lined with gouges or seams. Nix had an idea of what they might be.
“Out!” Nix said to the patrons. “Hurry!”
The spheres on the ground began to buzz, to rock slightly back and forth. Chairs spilled as the last dawdlers hurried for the doors.
Gadd was last up the stairs, tulwar in hand. He glanced back at Nix. Nix waved him on.
“Watch over Tesha and the rest. This is for Egil and me. Go, Gadd.”
“Gofti,” Gadd cursed, but heeded Nix’s words and continued upstairs, hurrying the Tunnel’s workers along.
“They could explode,” Egil observed.
Nix shook his head. “Not Kerfallen’s style. These are constructs.”
“These tiny little things? I’ll just throw them back outside.”
Before the priest took three steps toward the nearest of the metal spheres, their vibrations reached a crescendo and they began to open, unfolding like flowers in rain.
By then the patrons were almost all through the doors, their exit disorderly and chaotic. One of the last of them, a potbellied man with long wild hair, stopped near the door to look at one of the unfolding spheres. He stood frozen, watching it.
“Get away from it, man!” Egil shouted.
The ball unfolded fully, taking the form of a fist-sized insect. At its core was a large blue gemstone, and attached to the stone by wires or filaments or sorcery was a sharp stinger, thin legs, and parchment-thin metal wings that fluttered rapidly, giving off an odd metallic hum. It buzzed into the air, its movement sharp and quick. The potbellied man who’d stopped to look backed off toward the door, eyes wide, staring at the magical metal insect hovering near him.
“Don’t move,” Nix said, but the man did not heed him and instead turned suddenly, trying to bolt.
The mechanical insect buzzed toward him like a shot arrow and drove its stinger into his back. The man arched, screamed, shuddered, then stiffened as his flesh—and only his flesh—turned to a dull gray. The magical insect pulled free before the transformation was complete. It took Nix only a moment to register that the man had been turned to stone.
“Go ahead and throw them outside, would you?” he said to Egil.
Meanwhile, the rest of the metal spheres had already twisted and transformed into similar insectoid constructs, six in total, and took to the air, wings buzzing. Each had a different-colored gemstone for a body. Nix knew each would be lethal in its own way.
“Of course it leaves his clothing and possessions unaffected,” Egil said.
Nix nodded. “That’s because Kerfallen already owes me some clothes. Probably doesn’t want to get further in the hole.”
“Or because he wants the plates and cares shite for our skins.”
“Possibly that, too,” Nix conceded with a tilt of his head. “My blade’s shite for this work. Hammers will do for a kill, but too slow for much else. Each one of these things will kill in a different way. Don’t get stung.”
“Sound advice,” the priest said sarcastically. He kept one hammer in hand, put the other in its thong on his belt.
“I don’t have anything to finish them,” Nix said, his heart beating fast. “So you’ll have to smash anything I bring down.”
“Done,” Egil said.
The creatures gathered together into a swarm above one of the tables. They were going to come at them all at once.
An idea struck Nix, but he couldn’t act on it before the creatures buzzed toward them, a cluster of glittering, flying knives. Nix grabbed a chair and hurled it at them as he darted toward a window. The chair split the flock, catching one of the creatures—a wasplike thing constructed around a ruby—and sent it spinning to the floor, where it buzzed and skittered along the ground. A black substance leaked from its stinger, no doubt a poison.
“What are you doing?” Egil called after him, upending a table.
“Just don’t get fakkin’ petrified, yeah?” Nix called back.
Two of the creatures buzzed after Nix. When he reached the window, he yanked down the heavy curtains. Through the glass, he caught a glimpse of two tall, cloaked figures moving quickly through the crowd outside, making their way toward the door—two of the automatons from the bazaar, probably coming to finish what the insectoid constructs started. Nix flung the curtains at the two creatures flying toward him.
“Constructs outside on the way in!” he called to Egil.
Egil heaved up the table he’d tipped and flung it at the three creatures flying at him. They veered, darting to either side and avoiding the table, but Egil had already grabbed a chair. He spun as he picked it up, swung it, and struck one of the creatures flush. Its stinger sank through the wood of the chair’s seat, and it stuck there, buzzing angrily, the stinger emitting a shower of sparks. Egil slammed the chair to the floor and crushed the damaged construct with a blow from his hammer, hurriedly taking a wild swing at the other two as they flew at him. He dove under another table to avoid their attack, rolled out, and leaped back to his feet as the creatures came back around for another pass.
Nix’s curtains had enveloped the other two constructs. He hurriedly grabbed for the ends of the fabric and pulled them together, forming a makeshift bag to hold them. They buzzed and squirmed under the heavy folds but he soon had them. Stingers poked through the fabric, one barely missing his palm. He cursed, heaved the bag up, and swung it hard into the floor. Stingers poked through anew, an angry buzzing. One of the construct’s stingers was edged and knifelike, and the creature used it to start slitting the fabric. Nix cursed, hefted the bag, and slammed it down again, again, the weight of the curtain’s fabric working against him and cushioning the impact. The creatures would squirm or cut themselves free soon enough.
“Egil!”
But the priest had troubles of his own. Egil had dropped his hammer and now had a chair in each hand, spinning like an awkward dancer as he swung first one and then another at the two creatures, one built around a yellow gem, and one built around an emerald. They darted in and around, feinting, looking for an opening. Egil caught one with the chair and sent it flying into the wall behind the bar, where it broke into several pieces. He dropped one of the chairs and swung the other two-handed at the last construct, missing it.
It reared back and then darted in for Egil’s chest, stinger first. In desperation, Egil let go of the chair and grabbed at the construct with his hands. At first Nix thought Egil had somehow caught it around the middle of its body without getting stung, but then he saw. The stinger had gone through Egil’s palm. Blood poured down the priest’s arm.
“Egil!”
The priest grimaced, grabbed the creature around the body with his other hand, and pulled it out of his skin, grunting at the pain. It squirmed in his grasp, buzzing, its motion causing his arm to wheel left and right and up and down. Holding it tightly and mindful of getting stung again, Egil slammed it into the petrified body of the patron, shattering the creature.
One of the creatures w
riggled free of the curtain but before it could take flight Nix stepped on it with his boot. It wriggled and buzzed angrily under his weight.
“I could use a priest with a fakkin’ hammer!” Nix called.
Egil bounded across the room, crushing under his boot as he came the construct they’d downed earlier. He drew the hammer at his belt. Nix could see his flesh was darkening.
“Don’t crush my foot, yeah?” Nix said. “What are you feeling? What did the stinger do?”
“I’m warm,” Egil said, raising his hammer. “Getting warmer by the moment.”
The priest smashed the exposed head of the creature with his hammer and it went still, then he methodically located and smashed the remaining one through the fabric of the curtains.
“It’s a fever toxin. You’ll be dead in half an hour.”
“What?” Egil said.
“Or you could drink this,” Nix said, hurriedly fishing a healing elixir from his satchel of needful things. Once, Egil had been poisoned in the Demon Wastes east of the city and Nix had barely been able to save him. He’d carried healing elixirs in his satchel ever since. He tossed one to Egil and the priest popped the seal with his thumb and drank it down. Immediately the wound in his hand closed and the redness in his skin lightened.
“I only have a few more,” Nix said. “So maybe do better next time? Didn’t I say not to get stung?”
“Fak you.”
Nix drew his blade and nodded at the Tunnel’s double doors, just as two automatons from the bazaar walked through. “Ironically I bought those healing elixirs from one of those fakkers in the bazaar a few months back.”
The automatons paused in the doorway, took in the scene.
“I want the plates, Nix,” Kerfallen’s voice said from the mouth of the one foremost.
“Come get them then, wizard,” Egil answered. He tossed aside the empty elixir vial and strode across the common room floor, hammer at the ready.
A third automaton appeared behind the first two, smaller and hard to see. The two foremost started forward and one of them abruptly halted as a blade sprouted from its chest. It started to turn and the person behind it—not an automaton, as Nix had first supposed—kicked it to the ground, pulled his blade free, and slashed the automaton in the head, splitting the skull. Some kind of a dark ichor flowed from the gash.
