A Mischief in the Woodwork

by Harper Alexander

  Was it unsettling, discovering these details, this unknown and yet unmeasured sentience around us? To some extent, it had to be. But I was always so out of touch with emotion while immersed in the things that I saw; it was difficult to separate myself from the acute sense of fascination that seemed to dwarf all else.

  Sometimes, of course, the disturbance was more direct. Such was the case with what I gleaned from the growing patches of termite damage that graced the house these days. It had stricken me as unusual before, and this time, upon inspection, I dredged up the secrets that it was keeping.

  What I learned was nothing desirable. Hadn't I seen termites only one place, in all of my time spent in the various regions of decay? They had thrived in the Ravine, spewed from one Ambassador for the Angel of Death's smoking utensil.

  She had been here.

  Try as I might to feel the extent of her sentiment in and for this place, I could glean nothing more from the damage than that she had come, and made her mark on this place to pave the way for her master. Death was coming here, for someone.

  When Victoria fell ill, I assumed it would be for her. She had caught Lesleah's fever, and I stood by and watched as she was tended to, keeping it to myself that I knew – thought I knew – she was going to die. She pulled through, however – and when she did, she sported a scar akin to what I had developed by the end of my own past fever of the same nature. I saw the mark as Letta dressed her, and my fingers twitched. There was no discreet way to come into contact with the scar, for testing, but I could not suppress the urge. What manner of symbol was this?

  Experimentally, I went to my newfound mirror, unlacing my bodice to check my own scar, just to make sure. As I thought: nearly identical. But mine, of course, was dead to me. No answers keen on addressing my fingertips.

  It was not the most pressing of the two scar-inspired mysteries haunting Manor Dorn, however, and I quickly returned to the first. If not Victoria, then who? There was a new patch of decay in the doorframe of the kitchen. She had been here again. Abandoning dinner preparations to put my fingers to the damage, I was not prepared for the vision that found me this time. As soon as my fingers touched the wood, she became visible to me.

  The Ambassador – still in the house.

  She smiled at me, where she stood ready for departure by the door. As my focus steadied on her, the termites I thought I saw swarming about in the folds of her luxurious golden gown scuttled into the shadows of the fabric, perhaps imagined altogether.

  “Who–” I began. But she was gone.

  Presently, Tanen fell ill.

  T w e n t y - N I n e –

  Ransom

  The city loomed like some arena of a great ordeal before me. I had mastered the trepidation and walked into its jagged maw many times before, but today was different. Today my mission was not as simple as survival.

  People will tell you survival is many things, but none of them simple.

  Today was ruled by one highly untimely sentiment:

  I did it once. I can't do it again.

  What I had done, of course, had been nothing. I had stood by and left Tanen to his fate, watching like some indifferent being who could not be bothered. Now, my feelings for him were also many things – none of them simple – but I could not do nothing a second time, not if I had the power to redeem my lack of action from the first. That was a certain thing inside me, a driven must. Sometimes, things are clear that way. When they are, it does not do to overlook them.

  They may be the only real chances we ever have.

  The city was quiet and washed out in the day's sun, the bleached layer of powder making all the buildings look drained of color and life. I took a breath, my last before plunging into that dust-filled region, and stepped over the lengths of fallen gate. There were dominoes, now dusted over, scattered between the rungs. This day, I stepped over them, toppled bane of the past.

  The Ravine was not a place I had sheltered intentions of returning to, but somehow it had become a necessary evil, as circumstance had become awry and played out. I did not quite know how it had come to this, but I suppose all the pieces were there, laid out just-so in the past few months – perhaps in all of time – leading up to it. One way or another things had a way of doing that. Unbidden, unexpected, or otherwise un-called-for, the pattern had been laid.

  I picked my way over the rubble, trying to dredge up the memory of how to get back to the place I had so eagerly left behind upon my first encounter with it. I worried, briefly, that I would not be able to find it a second time, but it had left its mark on me, and called me back to it almost as if it knew I had unfinished business there.

  Not long before noon, I was standing at its edge, looking down into the salty shadows, remembering the tang of the place that lurked behind the tempering, inviting mask of shade. Sweat and blood had left furrows in the ground beneath the leaves as surely as the guileless currents of river water.

  With the reason for my return keen at hand, I looked for a way down – perhaps one that was not quite as rude as the first time. I opted for a voluntary descent this time around, searching out a spot with decent foot- and handholds, and shimmied down with every intention of returning to the same spot when it was time to find my way back out. I would not be trapped in this channel like the rest of them, not today.

  I had missed him, somehow, with my attention focused closely on the properties of the ravine wall, but as I dropped to the ground and turned to make my way along its length I nearly ran full-tilt into one of them.

  A sharp gasp drew me back against the wall, away from his skeletal, reaching hand. It shook as he dragged his bauble painstakingly toward me.

  “Please...” A deep, wavering, raspy word escaped him, dribbling from his cracked lips and rotting teeth. His face was gaunt, scarcely a layer of yellowish skin stretched over tarnished ivory bone.

  I forced myself back another step, hugging the wall, haunted by the sight of him.

  His lips worked again: “please”, but no sound came out this time, and they sagged with the effort.

  Swallowing, I gave the smallest hint of a head-shake – all I could manage – and darted around him, unable to suffer his presence, unable to explain myself, or his state. It was not my job. Not my burden.

  Not my privilege.

  My heart raced as I shirked him, as if he could reach out and snag me before I got past, but it was a silly fear. He was weighed down by bodily failure and decay, and the bauble that held him, and all that he had done to get there. It was a heavy fate indeed. There was no room for exertion to bring anyone else down with him.

  I slowed once he was a good dozen paces behind me, putting a hand on my discomposure. It would not do to run full-tilt into the Ambassador as my opening impression.

  There was the small matter of my ignorance pertaining to her whereabouts in the ravine – I had to remind myself I knew nothing of its extent – but I had a feeling it was not necessary for me to know. She would surely know that I was here, could feel my intruding presence in her domain. I could not imagine that anyone fell into her lair without her knowledge. Hadn't she called it akin to a spider's web? I felt confident she would feel the tug. It was a strange feeling, though, waiting as I walked. Never had walking been a thing of waiting before. It was always a thing of purpose, an act with a destination. One never waited for something on the move, or they might miss it, or it them.

  Where are you, Ambassador...

  Goosebumps had just risen on my flesh from the chill of the shade when she spoke:

  “Well. Avante of Manor Dorn.”

  I turned to see her where she had manifested behind me. The great golden train of her dress ran out of sight down the ravine behind her, a river itself.

  “You really ought to find something different to call yourself these days,” she suggested.

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Only a slave takes the name of his house. You are of greater things.”

  “Well there is hardl
y anything left of Dar'on to claim a part in it. Unless I am to be Avante of the Wreckage, I don't see much merit in staging an upgrade.”

  “Mm,” she responded. “Well, it was only a suggestion. I do what I can.”

  Now that she had put the thought in my head, I could not ignore it, though. In fact it was tempting, to change my name, to claim my freedom from the Masters that had owned me, the people that had decreed that manor my only right in the world. I found my mind wandering before I had even begun what I had come for, toying with possibilities, something fitting, something symbolic... The Ambassador was so beautiful, it was hard not to be seduced by everything that she said.

  I shook my head, stowing the thought for later. I could not let her games work on me. I was different than her usual crowd, could not let her treat me as such. She and I could negotiate somewhat on the same level, I was confident.

  “I am already here for a reason, my lady,” I said. “I do not need any other put upon me.”

  She shrugged her perfectly arched brows with an ironic sense of frustration, dismissing it. “And so you do. What is it, then, that brings you so foolishly back to my doorstep? You may not just come knocking at the door to Death's office whenever you so please and leave ever unscathed,” she informed me. “Certain bridges can only be crossed so many times. There are lines in this world yet, Avante.”

  Lines. My recent conversations with Tanen returned to me, reinforcing the reason I had come. “You've left your mark on Manor Dorn,” I said, getting to the point. “I've seen your minions, paving the way for your master. You've come for one of us.”

  “Mm,” came her response again. An indifferent acknowledgment. But it was followed by a secondary, seduced, “Yess.” I saw the pupils of her eyes dilate, and blinked, quickly, lest I get sucked into that great starry abyss inside them.

  “Tanen,” I declared, my eyes shut.

  “You do not miss much.”

  “You can't have him.”

  Her eyebrows arched further as I opened my eyes to face her once again. “I do beg your pardon?”

  I swallowed, not knowing how to explain myself. And of course I was a fool, throwing around bold statements that I could not back up with anything but pleading.

  It seemed she could read it on my face, however, without the troublesome explanation. It dawned across her beautiful facial structure, and a great, amused grin spread over her lips. A delighted little chuckle – almost a childish sound of glee – escaped her. “You have a debt to repay,” she taunted in realization.

  “I have a wrong to right.”

  She considered me, amused stars sparkling in her eyes. After a moment, she touched on something; “Righting a wrong is useless unless you mean it, Avante.”

  Something in me flared – something defensive, but perhaps guilty. Likely both. I tried to convince myself it was neither. But when I tried to turn it into something else, it only became jealousy that she could read me, and I couldn't.

  “Nevertheless,” I continued evenly, working to maintain my unperturbed facade. “I am here on his behalf. I cannot stand by a second time.”

  “This is as much to save yourself.”

  I fought against the implications, wanting to deny them. Holding onto my composure. I couldn't go home, regardless of what truths lurked within me.

  The Ambassador sighed gustily, making a show of humoring me. “And what words have you brought on his behalf? What have you rehearsed to break one Tanen of Cathwade free of the commanding bonds of fate? Only the greatest poets can charm Death.”

  “He is not dead yet. I need not charm him from a place of un-return.”

  “Well no poet charms me, my dear. Charm does not work against all-powerful seduction.” She let that sink in, let me stand amidst my hopeless folly for a few moments just for good measure. “So what have you to say for yourself?”

  “He is not supposed to go yet.”

  “Oh?”

  “I'm not finished with him.”

  That declaration caused her to take pause. I'm sure not because of any real impact, but to read it from me, the cause behind declaring such a thing.

  “You aspire to change him,” she surmised, and now she did look surprised.

  “I can change him.”

  “You are positively drooling with bold statements, aren't you? Perhaps that is what we should call you – Avante the Bold. Avante of...Bold Stature?”

  “I have my hands in greater things than Manor Dorn right now,” I agreed with her deduction of me. “He is one of them.”

  “So you come bartering with what? Your promise to change him so that I may overlook him in good conscience?”

  “Do you have a conscience? If so, then...yes.”

  “And if I don't have one? Then what does it matter if I ignore your little plea and move forth with damning a man I hereby see fit in this day and hour?”

  “I can change him,” I insisted, perhaps more pitifully than the first time. If she didn't have a conscience, it would do no good, but I had to try. Had to try to make her see. Had to prove that those greater than mortals could understand our noblest endeavors. That they had some indication of it, that it really did mean something.

  “I have already kidnapped his soul,” the Ambassador said. “How can you pay the ransom for something so thoroughly set in motion? I can grant what you ask, but not without a price.”

  I searched inside myself for some means to answer her with, something I could possibly offer. And something did come back to me – something caught in the web that had become of my fingertips, something burned into it. Upon my first visit to the Ravine, I had singed my fledgeling receptor digits on a shackle buried in the sullied ground-cover, and seen...

  “I can bring you the one who got away.”

  This, she had not been able to read from me. Perhaps it was buried in the shelter of my own unfathomable gift. She absorbed this declaration in earnest, considering me almost fairly. Perhaps not as an equal, but one who could wing it when I had something to fight for.

  “You will not find him from the safety of Manor Dorn,” the Ambassador told me, but it was not an expression of skepticism. It was a warning. “He has succumbed to the madness of torment and paranoia, and you cannot track a madman on a schedule, or by returning to comfort when your own day has come to an end. A madman's trail does not rest, but it goes cold overnight. It is erratic.”

  I swallowed, realizing she was saying I could not return to Manor Dorn if I was to go after him. I would have to sustain myself in the open city for the sake of such a quest.

  Part of me told me it was folly, that Tanen was not worth this undertaking, this risk. But I had a secret weapon at my fingertips, and was liberated by its presence. This man's story would be written across the rubble. I would find him by way of the braille street signs pitched in his wake.

  “I'm not afraid of the city,” I told her, my decision made.

  “Then bring him to me.”

  *

  She cast me out of her ravine, and I drank up the temporary exile that expanded all around me. Mischief was piled as far as the eye could see, and the arena I had seen as I looked upon the city from outside the gates this morning took on new significance.

  In my right hand I clutched the deserted shackle, the bauble trailing on the ground beside me. It was the only token of departure I was offered upon leaving the Ambassador's lair, but I took it. It was saturated with the only clues I could prepare myself with, and I ran it through my fingers as I stood at the edge of my journey, learning of its prisoner.

  I'm coming to put you back in your cage, Bailin, I thought. I was far from my element taking up this bounty-huntress task, but I was no longer so afraid of the elements that existed in the world.

  If it is ransom you want, Ambassador, it is ransom you shall get.

  T h I r t y –

  The City

  I turned my back on Manor Dorn and walked into the city, leaving the shackle in my wake, a token now dead to me, exhauste
d of its essence. My fingers hummed with the intake, eager to take up the scent.

  It was not inconvenient to stoop as I went, reading the rubble, since it was necessary to use my hands climbing all over it anyway. I would hoist myself up here, gleaning a taste, then steady myself there, absorbing something else. What became the real inconvenience to be reckoned with was separating all of the unrelated nuances from the case I was tracking. This place was positively saturated with meaning, with history, with overlooked detail. It was an overwhelming onslaught – all the more so because I found myself intrigued with every morsel, longing to follow every lead. There were answers here, explanations. But I was on a mission. It would have to wait.

  Still, it was impossible not to learn anything with the intake. It was information, and some of it clicked together without the fuss of stewing over it. Some of the pieces simply fit. I remained focused on my goal, but other things were taking form in the back of my mind.

  Things that I did not yet dare hope could be the key to a forsaken age.

  *

  I awoke again sometime in the early morning, unaware of when I had collapsed. The twilit city looked ashen at this hour, inevitably bringing forth the memory of my similar dream. The two scenarios eclipsed, feeling now like the first had been a premonition. It was more than a sense of familiarity I awoke with.

  It was the unbidden feeling of nostalgia.

  Shaking the disorienting feeling, I rose, brushed the powder from where it had settled on my form. No otherworldly predators had devoured me in the night, then. No wardogs, or Albinos, or similar mischief-spawn or mischief itself had had its way with me.