The Jack of Ruin

by Stephen Merlino

  Oh.

  As his memory of the situation returned, embers of panic blazed into life in his stomach.

  He surged to his hands and knees, only to fall over, tangled in a pile of furs and blankets. An infuriatingly irrelevant corner of his mind observed that he’d been lying half-naked on a bed with naked Kwendi.

  Flailing, he leapt back and piled through the hangings, trailing blankets behind him.

  Kwendi shouts pelted him as he fled down the ladder, but faded as he slammed through the kitchen and down the ramps to the cellar. Somehow he’d kept hold of his lamp globes, which he clutched like a life ring in one hand as he sprinted for all he was worth through the tunnel. Clutched in his hand, the globes gave almost no light, but he trusted to his knowledge that the corridor was clear and without impediment, and flew as fast as he could past alley after alley.

  Until the floor dropped away.

  And the opposite rim of the reservoir rushed toward him.

  In an instant of desperation, he extended one arm as he fell past the rim. His palm hit the rim as pain shot through his ribs and knees, and the air whoofed from his lungs as he body-slammed the wall. He’d let go of the globes as he grabbed, so once again he plunged into near-complete darkness as he hung there.

  Below him, the stolen spheres glowed like moons drowning in the pool.

  Harric groaned, but dared not move lest he cause his single hand to lose its grip.

  Shouts echoed down the tunnel behind him. The Kwendi had still been dressing when he fled, so he had a head start and now they couldn’t know which way he’d gone. They might seek him in the wrong direction, or they could even leave the tunnel and seek him on the terrace in front of the houses.

  Heart pounding in his ears, he listened until it was clear the shouts were growing louder.

  Cursing, he strained upward with his left hand, only to find his reach well short of the rim. Gods take it, they would catch him. He considered dropping into the pool, trying to hide there in the Unseen. But then what? He’d be stuck while they raised the alarm. And if he passed out in the water, he’d drown.

  Cobbing idiot. Too frightened to think straight, you squandered your cards.

  He hadn’t realized his feet had been scrabbling for purchase, but they must have been, because his sock-covered big toe found a mortar seam between stones and stuck. Hope rekindling, he put his weight on it, and though it hurt like the bite of a ragged tooth into the knuckle, it allowed for enough thrust for him to reach the rim with his other hand.

  “Stop!” The heavily accented word echoed through the tunnel behind him. It was the female Kwendi’s voice. The male echoed the command with an accent just as thick and an odd whistling note, and judging from the accompanying slap of running feet, they’d spotted him while still running up the corridor and would arrive at the reservoir in moments.

  Harric’s limbs seemed to move at half speed as he pulled and levered and scrabbled to get first one elbow and then the other over the rim and finally hump his torso onto the floor of the corridor like a seal onto a beachhead.

  “You stop!” The female’s voice bounced off the stone walls of the reservoir. She was in the archway.

  As Harric scrambled to his knees, wood cracked and snapped behind him. He whirled in time to see the left pole of the trellis collapse and drop one of his pursuers into the darkness. She cried out, and then a loud splash echoed in the chamber. The male had already leapt out to grab the trellis when it broke, but in a display of terrifying agility, he somehow latched on the remaining pole and swung to its top, where he gripped the remaining pole with all four limbs like a possum on a branch. His maneuver had set the pole to bouncing, however, and at the bottom of each bounce, it emitted an ominous cracking sound.

  The Kwendi froze, and Harric stared, mesmerized, but the pole did not break, and the bouncing settled. The male called down into the reservoir, and Harric noted an odd whistling to his voice. The female splashed below and responded with what sounded like cursing.

  The male’s golden eyes shone like a cat’s as he fixed them on Harric, and fierce canines glinted in the dim light. Very slowly, he advanced a hand along the pole toward Harric, followed by a foot, then the other hand and the other foot, and the pole held fast.

  Panicking, Harric leapt forward and shook the pole with both hands. Desperation gave him strength as he lifted it and hauled it down, instigating a chorus of crackling. The male snarled, freezing again on the pole. And then a flower of pain bloomed in Harric’s side, like he’d been stabbed. With a cry, he released the pole and staggered back into the archway. A glow stone bounced around the corridor behind him, and the female shouted in triumph.

  The male took his opportunity and leapt, close enough to grab the edge of the corridor. But instead of thrusting himself forward, he thrust the pole down and past its breaking point. The whole structure collapsed, and he fell howling into the cistern. A tremendous splash resounded in the chamber, followed by spluttering and whistling curses.

  Harric retreated farther into the tunnel. Rubbing the new welt on his side, he picked up the glow stone. Moons, the Kwendi can throw.

  But they’d lost. They were trapped, and he was safe.

  He crouched against a wall to catch his breath and take account of things. His chin and his knees stung and his ribs ached. The stone wall left scrapes all over him.

  “You stop!” the male barked. “You bad! You not should be here!” Again the whistling note whenever he made an S sound. The tangle of teeth at the front of his mouth must make the whistle.

  Harric said nothing.

  “Who you are?” Whistler called. “Say!”

  Harric stayed out of sight for fear of another whizzing glow globe. But a pang of worry prevented him from leaving. The two were truly trapped. They would not escape. The walls were too smooth, the pit too deep. And the bits of trellis that had fallen after them were too short to make a ladder. If he left them, would anyone find them? The city appeared to be deserted, after all. Others might search for them, but when? And how long would it take to find them?

  Uncertain what to do, he lay on his stomach out of sight beyond the rim until the Kwendi gave up calling to him and began talking to each other in Kwendi. Then he inched forward and peered over the edge. The two stood on a shelf on the side opposite the falling water. The shelf was a foot above the water and a pace wide.

  “You!” A shadowy figure pointed at him from the depths.

  Harric retreated. “I’m sorry,” he called. “I do not want to hurt you.” In his head, he could hear his mother laughing. Leave them, fool. They will starve or freeze in that consumptive pit, and no one will ever know you were here.

  Harric rubbed at a scrape on his chin. If they were rescued, the game would be up. Even assuming he got back through Brolli’s magic gate without being seen, the next time Brolli returned to his people, the word would be out and Brolli would know exactly which Arkendian had followed him through the gate.

  Let them die, said his mother’s memory, and no one will know you were here.

  After climbing to his feet, Harric opened the cellar door of the nearest home, gathered armloads of blankets and furs, and piled them at the rim of the cistern. After two trips, he’d amassed a huge pile. Without another word, he wadded them into tight bundles and tossed them down to the ledge where the Kwendi were stranded.

  Without waiting to see how they received them, he returned to a cellar and opened one of the many sealed pots. The sweet scent of fruit rose from it, and he smiled, remembering Mother Ganner’s plum preserves. A few of these pots ought to keep them fed until someone came looking for them. Gathering an armload, he took them to the rim and tossed them one at a time into the water. They splashed and plunked and bobbed. The Kwendi seemed to recognize what they were, because they gathered them in with long arms or with the use of one of the wooden rungs from the trellis. When several pots had been stacked on their ledge, the two bundled together in a nest of furs in one corner.


  Harric stepped out of view. Had he missed anything? They had enough food and water for days. They’d be uncomfortable, maybe a little embarrassed, but he would not let himself feel guilty about that. They’d have imprisoned him if they’d caught him.

  He returned to the cellar and found three fancy-looking dark glass bottles of what sounded like liquid. He guessed they must be wine or something like it. These he held it out above the water so the Kwendi could see it.

  “Drink,” he said. “Wine, I think?”

  Silence from below. After several long moments, the female said a word in Kwendi. “Zisk. From honey.”

  “Ah! We call it mead.”

  She made a spitting sound.

  Harric smiled and peeked down. In the light of the two glowing globes he’d lost in the cistern, he could see they were looking up.

  “What do you want?” said Whistler.

  Harric stepped back from the edge and wrapped the mead jars in a blanket. “Why are these houses empty?” he called. “Where are the people?”

  “You pig Stilties kill them,” Whistler snapped. “You—”

  A bark from the female cut him short, and he spat something in Kwendi.

  She said, “The Syne find you. Then we talk.”

  Syne? Was that the Kwendi word for Aerie? “How could we have killed your people?” Harric asked. “We have never been here.”

  More murmuring below, but nothing more.

  The claim that Arkendians had killed so many Kwendi was preposterous. There had been no great battles with the Kwendi in the Free Lands, and those that occurred between settlers and Kwendi had been notable Kwendi victories.

  Harric tossed the wrapped mead bottles into the water and left them.

  It was only after he’d traversed several more blocks of tunnel back toward Fink that he realized the two may have been in the deserted city in order to keep their relationship secret, in which case he’d pretty thoroughly exposed them. He had to chuckle. It would be embarrassing, but since Kwendi had no marriage or lasting pair bonds, it wouldn’t end with a jealous husband or wife leaving them there to starve.

  Retracing his steps, he counted alleys until he found Fink’s cellar, where the door stood slightly ajar. Knocking softly, he whispered, “Fink, it’s me,” so the imp wouldn’t have a seizure, and pushed it open.

  Shadows swung about the room as he shined the light from the glowing globes into each corner. “Fink?” he whispered. His voice echoed in the empty space. “Fink, come out. It’s me.”

  Silence answered him.

  Fink was gone.

  Old maladies plague the Free Road, and one malady never before seen in Arkendia. Hoof rot and the crimson we know, as they flourish wherever men and kine inhabit too little space for too long. This new plague is ten-boil. It is like to the fiery pox in all but this regard: when the number of boils reaches nine, say farewell to your lovies, for the tenth boil will kill you.

  —From “Worse Than Chimpies,” a tract criticizing the Queen’s Free Land policy in the north

  52

  Alone

  Harric scanned the room for signs of struggle, and to his relief found nothing. On the dusty floor he found the smudges of his own stockinged feet, along with the imp’s claw marks, but it was all too muddled to be of much use. None of the dust on the cellar ramp had been touched, however, so he knew the imp had not gone into to the house above. That meant he’d gone back into the tunnel, and that he’d probably gone back the way they’d come, or Harric would have met him on his way back from the reservoir.

  As he retrieved his pack and put his pants back on, he considered whether Fink might have moved to a different cellar, for some reason, or if he might have panicked and tried to find his way back to Brolli’s map room. When Harric stood again in the corridor, he stood still and listened for the familiar click of talons on stone or the hiss of terrified breath, but heard only the sigh of wind through a trellis in the nearby alley.

  Did he dare Summon the imp? He chewed his lip for a second. No. For all he knew, a summoning would be as much of a beacon to the Aerie as it was to Fink. So he crept back down the tunnel toward the square with its lonely fountain and scanned the dusty threshold of each cellar door, looking for signs the imp had entered one.

  It bothered him that Fink had left no sign or message. He could at least have drawn an arrow in the dust to show which direction he’d gone.

  When Harric reached the edge of the archway that opened onto the square, he peered out into the open space beyond. In the Seen, he could see only a few mushroom lights scattered among the high porches of the buildings on the other side, and the silhouettes of trellis everywhere. No movement anywhere. But what he saw when he looked at the same scene through his oculus made him suck a quick breath. On the trellises atop a building across the square perched a cluster of gigantic, moon-bright winged creatures.

  Aerie.

  A jolt of fear kicked his heart.

  He counted four of the monsters, each a giant some two times the height of a man, even while hunched on a trellis. They looked like a cross between a snow owl and a giant Kwendi. Owl-headed, owl-winged, long-armed and short-legged, and bright as sun on snow.

  Harric retreated into the tunnel. If those things had been there before, the sight of them would have given Fink a seizure. But their presence now might mean Fink was nearby. The Aerie had been drawn to Fink before; maybe Fink had relocated to a different building, and they’d been drawn to him. Maybe he was in that house where they perched.

  If so, they didn’t appear to be dismantling the house, or searching for the imp. Of course, there might be others that Harric couldn’t see prying through the alleys while these four stood watch. Or they might already have captured the imp.

  Harric’s heartbeat thrummed in his ears.

  Either way, that building was the best bet for Fink’s location. If Fink hadn’t been captured, he was probably gibbering in the corner of the cellar, and he’d need Harric to talk him back to sanity. If he had been captured… Well, no use thinking of it. Either way, Harric had to help.

  He backtracked and looped through alleys to the foot of the square where they’d first entered the abandoned city. From around the corner of the last house, he discovered that from that angle, the Aerie’s view of the foot of the square was obscured by taller buildings. That made it an easy matter for Harric to slip across the shadows at the foot of the square and dive into the tunnel under the front row of buildings.

  In the mouth of the new tunnel, he paused to catch his breath and hug himself to stave off a chill. Autumn was much more advanced here than it had been in the forest he’d left behind. That difference and the fact that he could never quite get enough air in his lungs led him to believe the Kwendi city must be on a mountain.

  Keep moving, stay warm.

  He navigated by looking through his oculus, trusting to luck that there would be no Kwendi to see him moving through the Seen, and confident that the merest glimpse of an Aerie through his oculus would stand out like a beacon. When he judged the tunnel had taken him near Fink’s hiding house, he scanned the threshold of each cellar door for signs of his passage. To his disappointment, the dust lay thick and pristine on each doorstep. Even the cobwebs across doors hung undisturbed, as if no one had opened these doors since abandonment.

  After rechecking each door, he stopped at the archway opening into the next alley and chewed at his lip. There were more cellars where the tunnel continued across the alley, but he was almost certain that the four Aerie perched somewhere right above him. It would be very risky to step into an alley right below their perch. Even sneaking up to the edge of the alley and looking up would be dangerous, as an Aerie in the right position would be able to see his feet appear in the archway before Harric got his head around to peer up.

  Swallowing back a curse, he got on his hands and knees and laid his already goose-bumped belly on the cold and gritty stone. Inching toward the arch, he peered up at the rooftops through his ocu
lus. No Aerie. He was about to inch forward again and stick his head into the alley to peek directly above him, when a blazing white elbow and massive fist shifted into view just outside the archway. Harric’s breath froze. The fist rested its knuckles on the stone of the alley as if its owner were standing guard beside the tunnel, and so close Harric dare not exhale, lest it feel his breath on its skin.

  Heart slamming so hard he feared the creature would hear it, he inched backward.

  The monster didn’t move, but Harric’s oculus began to burn and itch like he’d put his face in an anthill and the ants were swarming through his oculus into his brain. A bubble of panic threatened to burst in his chest. He wanted to slap his forehead. He wanted to run screaming.

  Staring at the gigantic fist, he forced himself to concentrate on a slow retreat. One move at a time, telling himself that it was the presence of the Aerie that caused the sensation, and that the irresistible crawling behind his forehead was already diminishing as he retreated. Mercifully, when he finally climbed to his feet and fled down the tunnel, it ceased altogether.

  Mother of moons…that was a thousand times worse than the cistern.

  He imagined if he tried to enter the Unseen and slip by the creature, his whole body would erupt with invisible ants. And he was not about to find out.

  But he could loop around through the tunnels under the next row of houses, and approach that alley from the other side.

  Retracing his steps, he crossed over to the next row of houses and crept through it until he judged he was many houses past Fink’s. Then he crossed back to the tunnel under Fink’s row. Of course, if the monsters had trapped Fink, then there was probably another guard in the alley on this side, too.

  Once again wishing he hadn’t left his lucky jack in his shirt back in the map room, he kissed his fingers for luck and crept toward Fink’s hiding place, scanning the thresholds of the cellar doors. No sign of Fink’s passage. But when Harric’s oculus began to crawl again, he knew he was nearing the alley with the Aerie.