Astrid froze when Boone’s pot belly exploded with blood and chunks of flesh.
Gormer screamed when two slender red arms thrust out from Boone’s belly and threw him clear. The con-man-turned-mystic hit the ground with haunted eyes and stayed there.
“Wha...what just happened?” Gormer stammered.
Mortsen dragged Gormer to his feet. His tunic was covered in blood.
Boone turned to face them. The pursuers formed a semicircle around him with Moxy and Tracker on either end.
“What is that thing!” Gormer screeched, nearly hysterical.
A wet, squelching sound made them all jump back. Boone’s eyes popped out from his skull and dangled by pink nerves. Two shiny, black spheres extended from the sockets and waved frantically.
Gormer turned white as a sheet as the creature used the pincer-fingers on the arms protruding from its belly to cut the flesh of its other arms.
It proceeded to shed its human skin like a suit of grotesque, fleshy armor.
“I yield,” the thing before them said. It dropped to its knees in the pile of butchered meat it once wore and raised all its arms. “I beg you to kill me, please.”
“No problem there!” Gormer picked up a large rock and stepped forward.
“Gormer, stop!” Astrid yelled. Mortsen grabbed Gormer’s hand before he could strike.
“Let me alone!” Gormer shouted. “We gotta kill this thing!”
“Yes, kill me. I beg you. I have failed master. I must die,” the creature opined.
It took Astrid a few seconds to grasp what stood in front of her. The being resembled the control animals attached to the remnant.
Its shell was the same deep red. Its body was segmented and shaped like that of a lobster or crayfish. The head, supported above the body by three shell segments, was triangular and shaped like the skull of a wolf, only smooth and even. When it spoke, a soft membrane formed something like very thin lips around rows of small, red, and very sharp-looking teeth ran along both its upper and lower jaws.
Astrid found its most striking feature to be the eye stalks protruding from the top of its head. Its eyes shone like highly-polished onyx in the moonlight. The stalks were formed from an articulated series of spiny shell pieces connected with tissue resembling cartilage. They moved smoothly and independently of one another.
“You are...so different. Not like any creature I’ve ever seen,” she said with a grim smile. “Why do you want us to kill you?”
“I have failed for the last time. Master will be angry. He will cause me pain. He will hurt you much worse because of me. I’m sorry about that… I tried to make everything go smoothly so not too many get hurt...I tried so hard...”
“Hey, if this thing wants to die—” Gormer began.
“Quiet!” Astrid snapped. She flashed him an angry look silencing him completely. “Not helpful!”
Gormer held up his hands and stepped back.
“I am taking you with us. Don’t resist,” Astrid said.
“You will kill me?” the beast questioned.
“That’s up to you,” Astrid said. “Put...ah...all of your arms behind your back.” The creature compiled, and Astrid bound its arms to its carapace with her rope dart. “I have to do this, you understand.”
She marveled at the six fingers on each of its four hands. With four joints per finger, the digits ended in long, tapered pincers that opened and closed like scissors.
“What are you?” Astrid asked when she was certain the being was secure.
“I am Skrim,” it pronounced the word clearly in its hissing voice that rendered consonants as something like clicks from the throat. “When will you kill me?”
Gormer twitched, but Astrid’s blazing eyes silenced him.
“Not just yet,” Astrid said. “Everything in due time.” She turned to Mortsen. “Would you please?” She nodded to the creature.
Mortsen poked the Skrim with his hard index finger. “You mess with me, and I boil you up and eat you with butter, you got that?”
“Will this one kill me?” the thing asked hopefully.
Astrid slapped her forehead and wiped a palm down her face. “Wrong threat, Mortsen.”
“Oh,” Mortsen stammered. “Ah, no. You resist, and I turn you loose. Let your Master kill you.”
At that, the Skrim collapsed and trembled with its eye stalks wriggling in the dirt.
“Oh, Mortsen,” Gormer exclaimed. “Oh, this...that’s so wrong. I mean… we don’t want to scare the thing to death...”
“I didn’t mean it…whatever the fuck you are…” Mortsen said. He bent down and hauled the Skrim over his shoulder. “I’ll kill you right quick as soon as we’re done with you. I promise. I won’t let your master kill you. You won’t suffer.”
“This is wrong,” Tracker declared.
“No shit,” Gormer shot back. “This thing shouldn’t exist.”
They started walking back into the Quarter.
“No,” Tracker clarified. “Not the Skrim. The way it is. It’s wrong. It shouldn’t be this way.”
“Let’s hope we don’t meet any more mercs on the way back to town. I’m worn out,” Astrid said.
“I think we got most of them,” Mortsen replied with much more pleasure than gave Astrid comfort. “Lucky they were all bunched like that.”
They met only drunks and people too involved in their own nightlife to care about the battered-looking group hurrying through the streets.
At the stables, they found the attendant not much more interested than when they left him.
“What the hell is that thing?” he asked, pointing at the Skrim. “Lake’s got monsters now? Bet it’d be good with butter.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Mortsen retorted.
“We need a wagon,” Astrid said.
“Don’t look at me for no wagon,” the kid spat.
Mortsen set the creature down and grabbed the young man by the upper arms with his broad, stonelike hands. He lifted the boy off the ground and held him there until he went silent and the straw dropped out of his mouth.
“How much did you fleece them for?” Mortsen asked.
“Five double-coins,” The boy squeaked.
“That’s more than you make in a week,” Mortsen declared, giving him a firm shake that made his dangling feet wiggle. “I’m gonna put you down, then you’re gonna run as fast as you can and produce a wagon for us. If you don’t come back in ten minutes, I’m going to find you and rip your tongue out through your asshole. Do we understand each other?”
“OK,” the boy stuttered. “Sure. I can do that.” He bolted as soon as his feet hit the ground.
“You think he’s coming back?” Hanif asked. “After that?”
“He’s a good boy,” Mortsen said with a frightening chuckle. “He just needs the right motivation sometimes. Can’t let him get over on my—” Mortsen caught himself. “Looks bad if I let the likes of him rip off a group I’m party to.” He gave a cocky sniff and hitched his pants.
The stable boy returned in far less than ten minutes. Moxy and Tracker only appeared from the shadows to climb into the back of the wagon with Mortsen and the strange creature.
“Where the hell did they come from?” the boy asked with his eyes glued to Moxy.
“Don’t worry about that, kid,” Mortsen said. “Just do your damn job and keep quiet about this!”
Gormer untied his mare and looked at the wagon. “Who’s gonna drive the wagon?”
“That’d be you,” Astrid called.
“What about Bika?” Gormer asked.
“I’ll take care of the old girl,” the stable boy said. “I’ll bring her to you in the morning.”
“That’s a good lad,” Mortsen called from inside the wagon. “We’ll be sleeping in, so you can bring her before noon.”
Gormer drove the wagon through the streets. It was well past midnight.
Vinnie had some cots brought into his office, and everyone collapsed into them soon a
fter they got the Skrim locked in one of the converted horse stalls. Astrid arranged a heavy twenty-four-hour guard to watch over the Skrim. She swore them to secrecy.
“Nobody would believe me if I told them about that...thing,” the watch commander claimed. “I’ll make sure my guards understand not to spread the word. It won’t help anyone. People are scared enough already. Is it dangerous?”
Astrid had to think about the question. “Yes, but more to itself...or himself…” The commander cocked her head in question. “It keeps asking us to kill it.”
“It’s not an animal...I mean...it talks?”
She peered through a set of thick bars set in the heavy wooden door.
“Yes. It’s sentient,” Astrid confirmed.
“Well,” the commander said with a sigh. “Any person who wants to die can be dangerous.”
“Keep it and yourselves safe. We’ll need to talk to it in the morning.”
When she was certain the Skrim would be guarded well, she went to Vinnie’s office.
Sunrise was mere hours away. Only Moxy and Tracker didn’t join them. Instead, they excused themselves and went out on their nocturnal adventures.
As tired as Astrid was, she couldn’t sleep. She thought about her conversation with the watch commander.
“Who’s awake?” Astrid asked softly in the darkness. She heard light snoring from Vinnie and Mortsen.
“Not I,” Gormer muttered groggily.
“Nor I,” Hanif replied.
“The best I can do is meditate and hope for sleep,” Tarkon mumbled.
“What is going on here?” Astrid asked. “I mean, things couldn’t be stranger. Not afraid to say I’m a bit confused.”
“Then let’s focus on the fact that we achieved our aim. We caught our man...thing...whatever it is. We found what we were looking for,” Gormer replied. “In the morning, we can find out what it knows and figure out our next steps.”
“I agree. We know much more than we did yesterday,” Hanif added. “Now we need to make sense of it. We have the advantage over the creature. We’re in the perfect bargaining position. It wants to die anyway, so it will likely tell us anything we want as long as we kill it when we’re done.”
Astrid leaned on her elbow and glared at Hanif across the room. “I live by a code. The code is everything. The Skrim is no threat now. It is at our mercy, and we are strong. ‘Respect all weakness and always defend the weak.’ I’m not killing a thinking, living, feeling creature without a damn good reason.”
“Not everyone lives by your code, Astrid,” Hanif countered. “And you can’t expect everyone else to follow it.”
“More the pity,” Astrid said. She lay her head back down, breathing deeply until sleep took her.
Chapter Eighteen
The Wee Hours
Gormer woke with a start as he fell from the cot to the floor. He landed like a drunken cat on one knee and two palms. His heart pounded in his chest.
“Wassat?” he slurred, sharply aware of movement in the dark room.
“Shhh,” Vinnie hushed him, and Gormer found powerful hands lifting him upright. “Everyone’s asleep.
“Not me,” Gormer whispered back. “Not anymore.”
“Sorry we woke you,” Vinnie replied.
Gormer patted his slab of an arm. “It’s a miracle I got to sleep. This feels like too much.”
Moxy and Tracker’s eyes glinted in the scant moonlight that managed to seep through the narrow windows of the hayloft.
“What’s going on?” Gormer asked.
“I’m sending Moxy and Tracker on an errand, and the workshop needs me.”
Gormer became aware of muted sounds coming through the floor. People were working down there.
Gormer cast a sheepish look at Moxy. “Can I come with you two? I promise I won’t be difficult.” He noticed they both wore their cloaks and had their blowpipes strapped across their backs.
Moxy stepped closer. “If you weren’t difficult, you wouldn’t be you. I was going to ask you anyway.”
Gormer and Vinnie tiptoed out of the office as quietly as they could while Mortsen snored. He was surprised Astrid didn’t wake, and Hanif slept so heavily in his cot that he looked dead.
The pixies made no sound. From the top of the steep stairs, Gormer had a complete view of the activity below.
“What is all this?” Gormer asked as he followed the pixies through the workshop.
“It is the future,” Vinnie answered, then hooked right into an office that was once a horse stall. He popped back out a moment later with a weapon in his hand.
“What’s this?” Gormer asked.
“It’s a magitech pistol,” Vinnie replied.
“I don’t know how to use that,” Gormer objected. “And I don’t need it.”
“Your daggers, illusions, and extreme sarcasm are not enough,” Vinnie shot back. “You just point it at what you want to destroy and squeeze the trigger. Flick this lever with your thumb first.” He pointed to a small device above the trigger. “It won’t fire until you do. Lever stays up when it’s in your belt unless you don’t want your balls anymore.”
Gormer took the weapon reluctantly and tucked it under his belt.
Outside in the cool, spring air, Gormer was surprised to bump into Jiri Petran.
“What are you doing up at this hour sneaking around the workshop?” Gormer blurted.
“I could ask you the same question,” Jiri replied with a rogue look that might have been Gormer’s twin.
“I’m going on some kind of Vinnie mission with my pixie friends,” Gormer replied. “Your turn.”
“I haven’t been to sleep since I heard Astrid leave for the quarter last night. I’ve been walking with the night watch.”
“Uh huh,” Gormer grinned, pinching his chin with thumb and forefinger. “You’ve got it bad, don’t you?”
The flash of anger on Jiri’s face brought Gormer’s body to alert in preparation for sudden flight.
“Is it that obvious?” Jiri asked, deflated.
“Completely,” Moxy confirmed. “I can smell it on you at the mention of her name.”
“Is that why you don’t like me, Gormer?”
The unguarded look of disappointment in the hardened warrior’s eyes brought down all Gormer’s wise-ass defenses.
“Oh, I like you just fine,” Gormer admitted. “But don’t expect me to admit that in the light of day about you or anyone else.”
“You should come with us,” Moxy invited as she led the way to the stables. “We might need the help.”
Jiri agreed by falling in with the rest. Gormer didn’t need his magic to understand Jiri was happy to go with them. All he had to do was watch Jiri fight a smile.
“All you people are making me too soft,” Gormer exclaimed with half-mocking resentment as he climbed into the driver’s seat of the wagon. “Let’s get going.”
Contraptions and Devices
Astrid woke well after dawn. Any waking hour past sunrise was too late for her. She got moving as soon as her bare feet hit the rough floorboards.
To her surprise, Gormer, Hanif, and Vinnie were not there. Mortsen, true to his word, was sleeping in. One of his bulky arms and a long leg hung awkwardly off the cot that was comically small for his body. Still, he looked almost unthreatening in repose.
She slipped into her boots and headed downstairs. She had become used to sleeping in her armor but felt it was about time for a bath and a change of clothes.
But when she reached the shop floor, she forgot all about that. The workshop buzzed like a beehive. Every bench was crowded with mechanical equipment. Scribes and craftspeople huddled at every table—building, recording, drawing, and calculating.
She was barely noticed as she walked down the aisle between benches. Coils and lines of bare copper wire snaked, angled, and stretched between various contraptions with gears, spinning disks, and sparkling lights.
She found Jakub and Cole huddled over a large, rectangular obje
ct with thin copper rods and three metal plates dividing it into sections. Complex, watch-like mechanisms were connected to the plates and other, similar mechanisms were organized in neat rows around the contraption.
“Where is Elise with the oscillator?” Cole asked. Astrid had never seen him move with such care. He wasn’t wearing his armor, sweat beaded on his forehead and threatened to drip down into the delicate mechanism he was busy installing in the machine.
Jakub used a rag to clear Cole’s forehead at regular intervals as he adjusted…
“What is all this?” Astrid asked. She stepped closer, but Jakub held out his arm to keep her away.
“A contest,” Jakub replied. His small, withered arm didn’t slow him down. He and Cole moved in perfect concert.
“That’s five,” Cole announced. “Eight more to go.” Jakub dabbed his forehead and moved on to the next device. His small arm happened to be the perfect length to hold the clockwork in place from a fully-upright position while Cole installed fine screws.
Astrid became engrossed in the activity. She took a step back and realized the same intense activity was occurring on every bench.
Elise bustled to the workbench and set down something that resembled the innards of a music box. Instead of being driven by a spring, this device was powered by a tiny, glowing amphorald.
“It’s delicate,” Elise warned. “It’s calibrated and ready to go.”
“Don’t worry.” Cole smiled without looking up from his work. “I designed the compartment to be free of vibration.”
“Don’t look at the others!” Elise urged.
“I wasn’t,” Jakub replied.
“I saw your head twitch,” Elise shot back and scurried away.
Astrid followed. She found Vinnie in the workroom where he had demonstrated his strange trick with the mind-control beastie. The room was covered from floor to ceiling with papers.
Every sheet was covered with drawings, scribblings, sketches, and figures. Trying to focus on any one mathematical formula or any single element nearly gave Astrid vertigo.
“What is all this?” Astrid asked.
Vinnie lifted his head from the table where he was hunched over a page dense with mathematical formulas.
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