The Jack of Ruin

by Stephen Merlino

  The contraption circled and feinted, and circled again. When a soldier was knocked down by a lance strike, the front rank of Kwendi surged forward to cover him while the second rank reclaimed the injured and redoubled harassment with hurling globes.

  Then the lance impaled itself dead center in a soldier’s tar-bag shield and stuck fast. As soon as the lance attempted to jerk back for another strike (another flaw, for a mounted lance did not recoil after striking, but drove through the target or splintered on impact), the tar of the shield held it fast, so it couldn’t retract. The lance merely jerked the soldier forward to his knees as thick black tar oozed from the shield. The stricken soldier dropped his cudgel and clung to the shaft with both hands and feet as if his life depended upon it. As his added weight dragged the lance down farther, the shield wall surrounded the horse’s “head” and showered it with cudgel blows.

  A cheer went up from the balcony.

  Attacking the horse. Had they learned that from Willard’s tactics in the Cleansing?

  But this was a flawed, foolish tactic for mounted knights. An actual knight would simply drop his lance if it stuck in a shield, and whoever had designed this simulacrum had not provided the Kwendi with a useful training tool at all. In fact, Harric began to appreciate that the Arkendian responsible had effectively sabotaged the Kwendi perception of mounted lances. When they met the real thing, in force, their strategy would be almost useless.

  A fierce pride of kinship with the architect flared in Harric. Though forced to build for the Kwendi, that nameless man had done real damage to their war effort.

  A bell rang, and the balcony exploded with hooting and howls. The squads below looked up and grimaced, waving long arms. One of them shouted something about “Stilty warriors,” and another chorus of howls went up.

  A flash of white caught Harric’s eye in the open sky above the open courtyard. Fink saw it too, and dropped from Harric’s back to drag him back against the wall.

  “Aerie!” Fink said, his trembling renewed.

  The monster disappeared above the building, but a moment later, its claws curled over the edge of the roof above them, as if it had perched there. In the Unseen, Harric had no oculus to erupt in irritation, but its presence resonated in the spirit world around him like the thundering vibration of a waterfall, and it made his entire spirit body itch. An instant later, another landed beside the first, and the vibration grew to such an intolerable pitch that Harric jumped, letting out a cry of surprise and distress. Without looking to see if any Kwendi had heard him, Harric bolted for the doors, only to find them closed fast and flanked by pouty toad-hat guards.

  “Close the shutters!” said the pockmarked elder, in his perfect Arkendian. Harric turned to see soldiers slamming doors over the balcony, and Kwendi flipping up their daylids. The shutters also closed out Harric’s view of the talons on the roof, and the itch receded to a level that didn’t make him want to tear off his own skin.

  “Kid, you okay?”

  “No.”

  Brolli turned to leave with the elder, and the guards swung the doors wide for them to pass. A handful of armored Kwendi accompanied them, and Harric followed them all as close as he dared. As soon as he could, he won free of the crowd and pressed himself against an out-of-the-way wall, rubbing his arms as if to swipe away biting ants. Fink cringed at his side, white eyes darting about.

  Harric said through clenched teeth, “You forgot to mind the Web Strands, didn’t you?”

  “Lot on my mind.”

  Brolli exchanged grimaces with the elder and swung away down the corridor, while the elder returned to the balcony.

  “Come on,” Harric whispered, before Fink could whine about the map room. “We’ll stay away from windows and balconies.”

  I ran a wagon caravan for His Lordship in the Free Lands… never guessed it would end as it did. Surveyors picked a lovely spot, I can tell you—high hills and green waters, trees tall as the sky and just begging to be milled. I hauled grain there all summer from His Lordship’s plantations down south, and my last job come when leaves was turning. …been a hard, dry road, and I was ready for a hot meal and a bunk. But as I come over the last falls below the place, I smelled smoke. And when I come to the manor…well, it was gone. All burned, and my mates was corpses. One man—Davey, he was, and a stout carpenter, too—still lived, but barely. “Who done it?” I says. “Was it Westies?” His eyes was wide, like he seen impits everywhere. “Chimpies,” he says. “Painted chimpies come out of the trees.”

  —“Testimony of Marto Bulls in H.M.’s Court,” after the Bright Massacre, first evidence the northlands were not “uninhabited”

  55

  Witch-Silver Depths

  Harric followed Brolli past smithies full of huge-armed Kwendi smiths, and armories that stunk to the moons of boiling tar. These places they dared not enter lest the smoke reveal their unseen bodies, “like a specter, perfectly detailed,” Fink said. They passed courtyards full of Kwendi children racing through trellises, orchards full of fruit smells and the squawk of birds, and halls full of Kwendi working leather or painting or weaving on looms.

  When they passed a kitchen where the Kwendi smoked what smelled like salmon, Harric’s stomach growled again.

  “Hush it, kid, you’ll give us away.”

  “I’m starving.”

  “You’re starving? Kid. Look what this has done to my luscious belly.”

  Fink clambered down from Harric’s back, and Harric turned to see the imp almost as scrawny as he’d been when first they met.

  Harric gaped. “You’ve shrunk!”

  Fink nodded, wings sagging. In his hands he cradled a tiny, round belly the size of a melon—all that was left of his tremendous surplus of souls. “Takes a lot to keep you in the Unseen, kid. Hate to cut this pleasant tour short, but we need to turn back.”

  Harric glanced after Brolli to be sure the ambassador was still in sight, then looked back the way they’d come. “Do you think you could remember the way back?”

  Fink went very still. “Are you saying you don’t know how to get back to the map room?”

  “Um, well, it’s been a complicated path.” Harric’s cheeks flushed hot. “Sure, I think I know, but…I just figure if we stay with Brolli, then we don’t have to risk getting lost; he has to get back before long.”

  Fink’s gaze hardened. “If I get low enough,” he said, very slowly, “I’ll need to feed off you. You understand?”

  Harric’s stomach felt suddenly heavy, but he nodded. If he thought he could find his way back through the maze of corridors and courtyards and halls, he would turn back right then. But there was a chance he could get lost and not find the way to the map room before Brolli opened the gate. And he wanted to see more—needed to see as much as he could of the Kwendi preparations.

  He motioned for Fink to climb aboard, and as soon he was set, Harric followed Brolli.

  *

  Brolli picked up his pace, and his path took them downward in spiraling ramps. When Harric guessed they must be several floors below the surface, Brolli passed through a set of tall, thick doors made of the blackest night. Harric stared at them, barely able to see them in the Unseen.

  “Witch-silver,” Fink said. “No presence in the Unseen.”

  Harric ran a hand along the face of a door. It felt cool and hard and heavy, like solid metal. Like the doors to a treasure vault.

  His heartbeat quickened, and a wry smile lifted one side of his mouth. “This is it, Fink.”

  The corridor beyond was just as black in the Unseen, lit only by the essence glow of the wooden trellis, for the floors, walls, and ceiling were all of witch-silver. It was like the passage had been carved from a mountain of the stuff, or as if some magic had turned the stone to the mystical metal. If it weren’t for the glow of the trellis, it would be like the void they’d traversed in Brolli’s gate.

  Harric’s gut tightened at the memory, so he kept his eyes on the trellis as he passed through the doo
r. Once inside, he noticed a trace of glowing essence from dust on the walls and floors, and that helped him to keep his feet and bearings.

  From then on, doors they encountered were closed and guarded by pairs of guards in special black uniforms and toad hats. These guards did not display the elaborate grimaces that others had for Brolli, and Harric guessed that they were independent of Brolli’s direct command. Slipping through these doors was difficult, as the guards closed them after Brolli, so Harric had to stay close on his heels. At the first of these encounters, when the guard started to close the door, Harric had to lunge through, causing him to run into Brolli’s tar-armored back. Fortunately, Brolli said nothing, assuming perhaps that a guard had bumped him.

  Their descent ended at the top of a wide ramp descending to the floor of a vast hall housing numerous spoke-limb trellises and teeming with Kwendi.

  The floors and walls here were also of witch-silver and totally lightless in the spirit world. Like the spiraling ramps, however, the lightless floors and walls were crowded with wooden tables and shelves and trellises that gave a substantial essence glow, and this—combined with the brilliant pale green strands of the Kwendi—lent the place enough volume and dimension to stave off memories of the gate void.

  As Brolli paused in the archway at the top of the ramp, Harric pressed against the wall.

  Fink’s talons squeezed tighter at the straps of his pack. “The women,” Fink whispered at Harric’s ear. “It’s the Chimpey women.”

  Harric paid closer attention to the clamor of the Kwendi below, and realized Fink was right. The timbre of their voices was brighter and clearer. Looking closer, he saw that their faces, without the harshness of the male teeth and whiskers, had a definite softness. There were differences in clothing, and their braids appeared to be adorned and arranged differently. Most surprising, however, was the fact that Kwendi females were as flat-chested as the males.

  Fink tapped Harric’s shoulder frantically and pointed into the hall. “What in the White Moon is that?”

  Something huge and dark moved in front of the glowing wooden pillar of a spoke-limb trellis. Whatever it was had no more essence or spirit to it than the witch-silver, so it all but vanished when it moved out over the floor. Harric froze, eyes searching the area where it disappeared until it appeared again in silhouette against a wall of shelves. Shaped vaguely like a Kwendi, it stood twice as high as a man, yet its body was without claw or hair or notable musculature beyond the mere mass and the thickness of its limbs.

  “It’s a tryst servant,” Fink said breathlessly. “Like Mudwhistle.”

  “Made of witch-silver?”

  Fink nodded. “Bendy witch-silver. No idea how they do that.”

  Two smaller forms leapt from the creature onto the shelves, but whether they leapt out of the creature, or had simply been clinging to it, Harric couldn’t tell, for they too gave no spirit light. They were shaped like spidery little Kwendi, and easily climbed to the top shelves, where they fetched globes of witch-silver. One of these leapt from the shelf into a trellis and began to swing rung by rung across the hall and up the ramp toward Brolli, until it hung by both arms in front of him.

  After a short conversation with Brolli in Kwendi, the creature whirled about and swung back into the depths of the hall.

  “These ones can’t see us either,” Harric whispered.

  “This place is a freak show, kid. We have to get out of here.”

  “We have to wait until Brolli leads us out, Fink. And just look at all this witch-silver, and the tryst servants. Don’t you see? This is where they make their secret magic. This is where you earn out of your probation, and I find a way to help my queen.”

  Arkendian courtship ritual is not designed to facilitate mating, but to discourage it…because of the need to identify the father of a child, and because children are… raised by the father’s family… Therefore, they attempt to confine mating to a single, well-known mate. In my estimation, however, Arkendians esteem the act no less pleasant than we…so it is no surprise that illicit mating is common…nor that the island is abundant with “illegitimate” children they call bastards.

  —From Arkendian Mating Mysteries, First Ambassador Brolli

  56

  Witches

  A loud voice trumpeted Brolli’s name from the bottom of the ramp.

  Brolli grinned and descended the trellis to the source of the voice. “Mima!” he called.

  The owner of the voice was a gray-haired Kwendi matron with a sooty and pox-scarred face. She grinned with what seemed like genuine pleasure, and when Brolli joined her, she drew him into an embrace.

  Harric descended the ramp with Fink clinging tightly to his pack, and stood behind Brolli.

  Mima’s announcement of Brolli’s arrival caused the hall to surge with excitement. Shrill cheers erupted from various parts of the hall, and dozens of beaming female faces converged toward him, flashing teeth and craning necks for a look. Love and admiration radiated from them. The cheers spread to distant parts of the hall, and repeated several times before the place returned to some semblance of its former business.

  One of the smaller tryst servants approached Mima and swung to a stop beside her. In its feet it carried a heavy bandolier of witch-silver hurlers, which Mima took and presented to Brolli.

  “Ah! I need these,” said Brolli, speaking slowly and deliberately in Arkendian. “I used some of your last batch. They were excellent.”

  Mima said something in Kwendi as she wiped her hands on a leather apron so sooty that it seemed unlikely it could accept any more from her hands. Patches of perspiration stained the long vest and short pants under the apron, leaving pox-scarred arms and legs quite bare.

  “Still no Stilty, eh, Mima?” Brolli chuckled.

  She made a sound of distaste and turned away into the hall, beckoning Brolli to follow.

  “But you understand it well enough.”

  She did not respond. Now that the initial excitement of his visit had subsided, she seemed weary, as if at the end of a long working day.

  Mima led Brolli into the aisles of tables, and Harric followed as closely as he could, but Brolli attracted the younger Kwendi women, which made it dicey to stay too close to him. Wherever he went, weary faces lit, and when he passed, they worked with renewed purpose.

  Soon it appeared to Harric that Mima was parading Brolli about for that very reason. She brought him to every corner of the hall, and in each one he was greeted by other matrons, distinguished from their apprentices not only by their gray hair, but by leather aprons, while their helpers wore aprons of cloth.

  Each matron also wore a belt and keys and what looked like a hoop of marbled stone as big around as a tea saucer. These they wore behind their aprons on cords from their necks. The matrons kept one hand on them almost at all times, for they were heavy. But Harric caught a good look at a couple of them, which appeared to be carved from white stone marbled with veins of red and black.

  Harric flinched as something bright moved near him in the side of his vision. A strand of spirit quested toward him from high in the trellis, moving downward like a blind worm.

  “Fink!” Harric said. He ducked and backed away from the strand, almost knocking over a shelf of witch-silver bowls in the process. “A Web Strand!”

  “Can’t be,” Fink whispered. But a breath later, the imp let out a low hiss and said, “Mother of moons. How’d that get here? Web Strands don’t go underground.” Then the hiss sounded more like anger, and a tone of menace entered his voice. “That’s part of the Unseen. They’re tapping into our moon.” When Harric backed far enough away, the strand appeared to lose interest in Fink and the nexus stone in his talons, and instead drifted toward a nearby matron.

  Harric was watching to see what would happen when it reached her, when a piercing screech split the air.

  A door in one of the long side walls burst open on its hinges. The explosion sent a shuddering vibration through the floor and a thick billow of smok
e into the room.

  For a heartbeat, a paralyzed hush filled the room, then clamor erupted. Mima shouted; Kwendi women hurried past Harric and bumped hard into Fink without stopping. Witch-silver servants rushed to the smoking room and disappeared inside.

  Fink dove under a table while Harric jumped on top, knocking a stack of bowls to the floor. From his vantage, Harric saw one of the huge witch-silver servants emerge from the smoke with two matrons in its arms. One of the matrons choked and coughed and nodded repeatedly, as if to say she was unharmed. The other lay limp and did not open her eyes.

  The servant laid them side by side on a table only ten paces from Harric and stepped back as other matrons surrounded them. As the second matron opened her eyes and tried to wave them off, a fire flickered to life in her hair, and the witch-silver giant snuffed it with a gentle hand.

  When it was certain both matrons were conscious, Mima exploded in what sounded like a scathing rebuke. Pointing and gesticulating, she stormed around the table bearing the injured matrons. Most of the smoke had risen high into the trellises, but the hall now stunk of burned metal. Harric saw then that the smoking chamber was one of many adorning the long wall of the hall, and that each bore scorch marks or soot streaks from similar accidents.

  When Mima finished her tirade, she stood fuming beside Brolli. The two spoke in Kwendi, and Mima motioned to the tired, dirty girls in aprons and the drooping matrons.

  Two of the huge tryst servants lifted the table with the injured matrons and carried it like a stretcher to a small trellis tree hung with heavy cloth partitions, on the opposite side of the hall. Mima turned to go in the opposite direction toward the smoking chamber. Before she left, she spoke to Brolli and pointed to the ground where he stood, as if instructing him to stay put in her absence.

  Brolli stayed put for a few heartbeats, then he swung into the lowest branches of the trellis and headed toward the partitioned trellis tree. Harric slipped to the ground to follow, and instantly regretted it, as the younger Kwendi women moved toward Brolli like iron filings to a lodestone.