Unfettered II: New Tales By Masters of Fantasy

by Shawn Speakman

  Ten of them, to be exact.

  At the Hovel. In the mountains. Where Counselor Kwandre had taken her after finding her bloody and crying.

  And now she had come here, to Frisco, capital of the Redwood Empire, because there would be only one moment in her life where the millennia changed, when the year flipped from 3,999 to 4,000, and she wanted to spend it in a big city, not holed up in the icy mountains with the same fifty people she saw every goddamn day.

  December 31.

  New Year’s Eve.

  The sun, just beginning to set.

  And she reeked of piss.

  What had she been thinking? The Hovel was safe. She should have stayed home. She should have stayed hidden away from the world.

  A bump from behind, making her stumble.

  Balance first, there is nothing without balance . . .

  Muscle memory kicked in: feet wide, knees bent. She turned only enough to see who had hit her.

  Not the Laughing Man. A couple. Drunk. Giggling. Stumbling out of the bar. His hand in her shirt. Her hand down his pants. How do people walk like that?

  People. So many people. She wasn’t used to it.

  Her jeans, growing colder. Were people staring at her? She could smell her own piss. She hadn’t drank enough water. Counselors always told her to drink water whenever she could.

  The crack of a whip.

  Her feet moved her out of the way of a pair of Belgian draft horses pulling a wheeled beer keg bigger than her whole room back in the Hovel. Her head didn’t even reach the top of the horses’ shoulders. Huge animals. Horses, keg, and driver—wearing a red vest and yellow felt hat, sitting on a buckboard attached to the keg, whip in hand, glaring down at her—rode past.

  “Fucking tourists,” he said. “Think you own the fucking streets.”

  She needed to get out of this crowd. Just a few minutes alone, to think.

  Lisa moved to the stone wall of Ziggy’s Place. Having her back to the rough blocks made her feel a little better. Rumor was the stones were from the original Peninsula Wall, breached a thousand years ago by the Wyoming hordes, before Goddess Chanterelle dug the Trench.

  Lisa was breathing hard, like the untrained. Like a little girl.

  Breathing second, you can’t fight if you don’t breathe . . .

  “Shut up,” she said to no one, to those goddamned mantras the counselors made her say a million times, that they’d drilled into her head over and over again.

  The Six Facets.

  Balance. Breathing. Avoidance. Warning. Disabling.

  And the last facet: Killing.

  Was that what she wanted to do to the Laughing Man?

  Yes. A billion-trillion times yes.

  The smell of piss.

  Oh sure, she was sooooo tough. A real killing machine. She was such a danger, wasn’t she? Pants soaked with her own instinctive fear, she was a deadly little warrior.

  Lisa slid her hands into her wide sleeves, felt her fingers brush against the familiar slivers in their little leather sheathes before she gently held her own elbows. Her hands shook. Her breath rattled. She dipped her head, letting the heavy hood hide her face a little more.

  Turning with the crowd, she walked down the street, eyes looking out from under her brows. So many buildings. People everywhere. An open door . . . no, just another bar. She needed a moment alone. There, an alley. That would do.

  She turned right, into the narrow alley. Two bums, sleeping, covered in mud and filth and shit. Even if they weren’t asleep, they were clearly little threat.

  Everyone is a threat—those who underestimate the lowliest wind up being six feet lower than they.

  “Shut up,” Lisa hissed.

  What did her counselors know, anyway? All that training and this is how she reacted?

  She walked to the back of the alley. A dead end. High stone walls on two sides, brick at the back. Counselors screamed from somewhere in her mind, told her to get out of there. Avoidance: harder to avoid if there’s only one way to run.

  Lisa didn’t care. Everything they’d taught her was a lie, obviously. She walked to the end wall, put her back to it, slid down to squat on boot heels. Her heavy gray-brown cloak rested on the muddy ground, soaking up water. So what? She didn’t care. She had to clean everything anyway.

  Ziggy. An ugly man, fat and swollen, but he’d been nice to her. He hadn’t laughed. Lisa wanted to go back. The ocean was close to here, just a bit to the north. She could see Alcatraz Castle rising up impossibly high above the skyline. How did they make such buildings? Maybe she could walk to the ocean, clean her clothes, and go back to Ziggy’s Place . . .

  What was she thinking? Laughing Man had been in there. She couldn’t go back. Not ever.

  She needed to get out of Frisco. Stupid to come here. The counselors had warned her. She hadn’t listened.

  Time to leave the way she’d come, just walk out of the city and down the peninsula. Even if she could have afforded a ferry to Oakland, she didn’t want to be stuck on a little boat with so many people. With so many men. On a boat, there was nowhere to run. The only avoidance was jumping into the water, and people didn’t live long there, not with the sharks and the orcas and the wolf seals. Maybe her counselors were wrong about much, but when it came to being eaten alive in the ocean she wasn’t going to second-guess them.

  Lisa felt like an idiot. She felt useless. She felt weak.

  Ten years, wasted.

  Nothing going to change here. Time to get the hell out of the city. Get out and never come back. Just walk South, the way she’d come in. Swing wide of Daly City, where the Cintophiles dominated regardless of who sat in the Redwood throne.

  She stood, hands never coming out of her sleeves. Back to the mountains. Back to the Hovel.

  Two months of walking to get here.

  Two months of walking to return.

  Lisa took one step away from the wall, then stopped cold when two men entered the alley.

  Laughing. Swaying slightly. Already drunk, perhaps. They wore dusters, one the deep green common among travelers from the Pacific Northwest, the other a dark gray, both thick with road filth. Cattleman hats that had seen better days. The look of men used to violence.

  Lisa didn’t move. She was half in shadow. Maybe they’d be drunk enough to do their business and leave without noticing her.

  Each man took a side of the alley, leaning against the wall with one hand, reaching into their pants with the other.

  “Better pace yourself, Fishy,” said the one in dark gray. “Keep drinking this hard you’ll be passed out before ten.”

  “When I want—” said the one in green, who shivered once, then shook himself, then grunted as his piss began to flow, “—oh, Sweet Buddha, that’s better.” He tilted his head back, stared up at the darkening sky and let out a sound of pure relief. “When I want your opinion, Jimmy, I’ll beat it out of you.”

  His accent was thick, but she could understand him clearly enough. Northern Cusa tribes, maybe? She didn’t have a lot of experience with the Washington dialects, but it might be that, too.

  The green-dustered man turned slightly, started pissing on one of the sleeping bums. The man woke suddenly, face scrunched, hand coming up to block the stream.

  “Asshole,” the bum said, obviously well practiced at going from passed out to wide awake. A survival skill for someone who lived on the street. “I’ll kill you!”

  The man in green kicked out a black boot. The heel smashed into the bum’s mouth. The bum sagged back into a shapeless heap.

  “Doubt it,” the man in green said. “Aw, goddammit, I pissed all over myself. Should have finished before I kicked him.”

  The man in gray laughed as he put his cock back in his pants. The laugh didn’t last long—one glare from the man in green silenced it.

  Then the man in green looked to the end of the alley, stared Lisa in the eyes.

  “What have we here,” the man said. “Hello, little lady.”

  Th
e man in dark gray saw her as well.

  Lisa said nothing. She wished herself invisible. She wished she’d never come to San Francisco. She wished, most of all, that she hadn’t been so stupid as to walk into a dead-end alley.

  “Dark meat,” the man in green said. “My favorite. Name’s Fish. This here is my traveling partner, James.”

  The man in the dark-gray duster nodded, alternating his glance between Lisa and Fish.

  “How do,” James said. He sounded nervous. He sounded like he’d been in scenes like this before, with Fish, and didn’t like how those scenes had turned out.

  Still Lisa said nothing. She just nodded. She wanted to walk past them, had to walk past them, but to do so would be to get close enough for them to touch her. Just walk away, just go, please. She’d heard enough stories from others at the Hovel about what could happen in alleys, in the dark places of any city—the same things that happened in the dark places of small towns like Twin Falls, things she knew all too well.

  “Let’s get to the next bar,” James said. “You gotta see McIntyre’s Place. They got dancing girls in cages. Nipple tassels and everything.”

  Fish smiled a crinkly-eyed smile. Top front teeth, missing.

  “I think I’d rather have a piece of this one right here.”

  That smile reeked of entitlement. A man that thought he could take what he wanted, whenever he wanted. He couldn’t be denied. What woman would want to deny him?

  Lisa heard a ghost-echo of the Laughing Man’s grinding giggle, an echo that faded. In its place, she felt something strange happen. The training she’d disparaged, the mantras she’d said ceaselessly over the last ten years, those things spread through her, both calming her and making her nerves jingle and tingle and sing with excitement.

  “Leave me alone,” she said.

  Fish puffed out his lower lip.

  “Awww, darkie don’t want a drink with two nice fellas? I bet you got some friends around here, don’t you, doll? Me and Jimmy been riding with Highwayman Pitrelli. We just got paid. You heard of Highwayman Pitrelli, right?”

  She had heard of him. Everyone had. She shook her head anyway.

  “I’m not from here,” she said.

  “All the more reason to let us show you a good time,” Fish said. “Jimmy’s from here, he knows this town. Why not celebrate New Year’s Eve with us?”

  “Fish,” James said, glancing back to the street, “she said she don’t wanna. Let’s get to getting.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Jimmy.”

  The man in the green duster took a step toward her.

  So stupid to walk down here!

  “You’re pretty, girlie. Real pretty.”

  Lisa said nothing. She took him all in, her training guiding her to observe the details. The deep-green duster. Thread holes on the left breast in the shape of a Celtic cross. Beaverton Brigade? Kicked out, maybe, some sinful behavior or another. Deer antler knife in scabbard, right hip. A lefty? Three sliver holsters just left of a ceramic belt buckle in the shape of a leaping trout. Billy club through a ceramic loop on his left hip. Boots, black button-down shirt, torn jeans, all coated with the mud and dirt of a long ride. A strap across his chest, holding a weapon holster on his back. Thick handle jutting up past his right shoulder. Sandsword? Macanna?

  Fish took another step closer, stumbled slightly, recovered.

  “You know, when a man pays you a compliment, you should smile. You’d be even prettier with a smile on your face.”

  Close enough for her to smell him now. Beer. Whiskey. Sweat and stink, the smell of smoke and meat, like he’d just come from a barbecue.

  The man seemed to fill the alley. No way around him without getting close enough for him to grab, to touch, to hit.

  She couldn’t avoid, not anymore. Now she had to warn.

  Lisa put one foot forward, one back, dropped into a fighting stance. She reached into her shirt and pulled her necklace free. She gave it a practiced shake; the rattlesnake tail gave off its dry, rasping sound. Familiar to many, but not all. That was why the necklace had a second talisman: the fanged skull of the same snake.

  Lisa let the two talismans drop. They hung in front of her shirt now, suspended by the leather cord around her neck.

  “Fuck off, mister,” she said. “I ain’t worth the trouble.”

  Her stance seemed to delight him. Fish smiled wider—the front teeth weren’t the only ones missing.

  “A baby rattle,” Fish said. “Ain’t that sweet?”

  Lisa had hoped the man knew what it meant. Sometimes people did. Those times were better than when they didn’t.

  Fish took a step toward her, but James moved faster, grabbing Fish’s shoulder.

  “Hold on, Fishy, she’s a Victim.”

  Fish looked at the hand holding his shoulder, then up at his friend.

  “Better for you if you take your paw off me, Jimmy.”

  James did, and quickly.

  “You don’t understand,” he said. “Leave this girl be. She’s a Victim, with a capital V.”

  Fish looked from his friend to Lisa.

  “That supposed to mean something?”

  Lisa nodded. “Does if you’re smart.”

  “It’s a cult,” James said. “Assassins and shit. Killers.”

  Fish considered this.

  “So you’re a bad-ass,” he said to Lisa. “Is that it?”

  Lisa’s body itched with the need to be out of there. She didn’t know the right answers.

  “Not a bad-ass. Just not worth the trouble.”

  Fish spread his hands.

  “Now you got me all curious,” he said. “You going to whip my hide if I touch you? Little ol’ you going to whoop big ol’ me? Like them karate motherfuckers from St. Louis, is that it?”

  He remained planted in the middle of the alley.

  “I heard things,” James said. “They supposed to be real fast on the draw.”

  Fish picked his nose, flicked a booger away.

  “I’m pretty fast, myself,” he says. “People all say it all around. Fastest in the Northwest. Maybe we should find out which one of us is faster.”

  Still aggressive, still carrying the promise of pain and dominance, but his demeanor had changed slightly. Fish was intrigued. Lisa couldn’t put her finger on it. It was almost like he wanted James’s claims to be true, like Fish heard of legends his whole life and always found them to be false.

  “You’re drunk,” Lisa said. “Trust me, mister, you don’t want to find out how fast I am.”

  Fish rolled his eyes.

  “Yappity yap-yap-yap. Everyone’s a barking doggie. Bark, bark, bark. Tell you what, darkmeat—” Fish widened his stance “—why don’t we just see what you’ve got. You got two choices—draw, or give me a nice, long kiss.”

  Fish’s fingers wiggled near the sliver holsters on his belt. Three of them. Each little leather pocket hid a two-inch-long glass throwing knife, thin wood handles sticking up, ready to be grabbed.

  How had this happened? She didn’t want trouble. She hadn’t when she’d been a ten-year-old either, but trouble had found her.

  “Fish, come on,” James said. “You ain’t from here. Frisco cops are a mean sort.”

  Fish nodded. “I’m sure they are. And I’m sure they don’t give a fuck what happens in some piss-stinking alley when the streets are full of New Year’s delight. Besides, darkie ain’t going to draw. She wants to give old Fishie a kiss. Don’t you, doll?”

  The man puckered his lips, made three kissing sounds, then smiled.

  Kissing.

  Like the Laughing Man had done.

  Never again . . . never again . . .

  Ten years of training became a spirit that possessed her, took her over, controlled her from head to toe. The training was a bent branch held back by a hundred thousand throws, a taut bowstring waiting to snap.

  She waited for Fish to blink.

  When he did, the first sliver was out of her hand before he opened his e
yes.

  It knocked his cattleman hat from his head, sent it tumbling.

  The second sliver flashed out and the hat spun a different way.

  Just before it hit the ground, the third sliver slapped it backward.

  She slid her hands back into her sleeves an instant before the hat landed on top of the unconscious piss-soaked bum. Her fingers gripped the handles of two more slivers, ready to throw again if Fish made a move, already locking in on her next target—the base of the neck, just below his windpipe.

  Because if warning didn’t work, she had no choice but to move to killing.

  “Holy shit,” James said.

  Fish stared. He blinked—for only the second time in the short encounter—and his expression shifted from entitlement to drunken amazement.

  “Jimmy, did that just happen?”

  James stepped to the bum and picked up the hat. He walked to Fish, held it up for all to see. A thumb sticking through a hole in the brim, fingers through two other holes in the crown. He wiggled all three digits.

  “Yep,” he said.

  “I didn’t even clear leather,” Fish said to Lisa. “I mean . . . you could have killed me.”

  She focused on containing the tremble that desperately wanted escape, wanted to shake her body around.

  “Like I said, mister—just leave me be.”

  Fish took the hat from James. She thought he was going to put it on his head, but instead he held it to his chest with both hands.

  “Ma’am, I ain’t ever seen throwing like that. I’d sure like to buy you a drink. I might have been a bit of an asshole there—I’m told that’ll happen when I drink. I’d like to apologize.”

  James snapped a glance at Fish so fast Lisa thought the man might fall over. She got the instant and unmistakable impression that James had never heard Fish apologize before.

  “Get out of my way,” she said. “I mean it.”

  James scooted backward, palms out toward her.

  “We’re going, miss,” he says. “Ain’t we going, Fishy?”

  Fish affected a gentleman’s bow, left hand holding his hat to his chest, right hand reaching out dramatically until it hit the alley wall, throwing him off balance. He stumbled, stood, swayed drunkenly.

  “I’m a bit tipsy, little lady. Will you be going to the matches? Everyone is going. Duke Chesterton supposed to wrestle El Tornado.”