by Unknown
Ralice waved at the many large, round lids set into the floor. “Is that what these…?”
Gelgur nodded, and pointed. “That mark means acid—larger is stronger—and that one is acid-quench, to turn acid into harmless but reeking water. Avoid them all. We have to get—”
He waved at a far, dark corner of the room.
Out of which promptly stepped a man. Their guns came up—and wavered.
The man gave them a tight, pain-filled smile as he came toward them, hands empty. High Shieldmarshal Ansel Kordroun.
Battered but whole again, as if they’d never seen him killed in front of their eyes, his face blown off. So unless all they’d ever been told was wrong, and magic did work in Alkenstar, this must be a shapeshifter.
Unless the Kordroun who’d brought them together and led them through the Gunworks had been an imposter.
“Gelgur,” Ralice said quietly, her gun—the revolver that had been Kordroun’s—coming up again, “this can’t be Kordroun.”
Gelgur stared into eyes that were Kordroun’s, yet couldn’t be, and remembered seeing Kordroun firing at him in the alley and then another Kordroun joining him just after that. He tried to remember what he’d heard about shapeshifters—creatures called doppelgangers, yes. One had once been unmasked in the Duchy, long before his time…
Kordroun was striding steadily nearer. Dropping the little gun he’d scavenged from Kordroun’s body into a pocket, Gelgur went to meet him, stepping into Ralice’s line of fire.
“You can tell he’s a doppelganger because he’s slightly uglier than Kordroun himself.”
“Ansel, old friend,” he said firmly, putting a smile on his face as he slid his other hand into his other, already bulging pocket. They’d never been friends, old or otherwise.
The high shieldmarshal’s smile widened, and he nodded.
“Oh, it’s really him, all right,” Gelgur said over his shoulder, to Ralice.
“What?” she exclaimed. “Gelgur, are you mad?”
“No,” he replied calmly. “Not mad. Just close enough.”
And he was. To fling a handful of balls from the clockwork trap-gun batteries into the shapeshifter’s face, and a second handful under its feet.
It fell hard, and Gelgur game down on top of it, knife out and slicing hard.
Across the throat, and back again, deeper, blood that was the wrong hue spurting, sawing hard, beheading the thing.
Kordroun’s mouth yawned in pain, stretching impossibly wide, as the head rolled away. It was going pale, the hair melting back into the whitening flesh. The rest of the body convulsed under Gelgur, limbs going long and thin and white.
Ralice fired twice into the rolling head, her face twisted in disgust. Gelgur calmly slid a vat lid aside with one foot, and kicked the shapeshifter’s body into the acid. When Ralice lowered her gun, he added its head, too.
Sliding the lid back into place, he took the gunhunter by the arm—she was as pale as the doppelganger, her eyes wild—and led her away.
∗ ∗ ∗
The badge Bors had stolen from the real Ansel Kordroun got them past the gate guards, out through the wall and into the wildlands.
It was a cold, windy night, brightly moonlit when dark and ragged clouds weren’t in the way, and Ralice peered this way and that, eyes still wide.
Gelgur led her around a hill, out of sight of the guards. “What ails you?”
Ralice gave him an angry glance. “I’ve never set foot outside the Gunworks before. Where are you taking us?”
“Out into the Mana Wastes,” Geglur told her. “It’s that or be killed, with Loroan hunting us, and Irori alone knows who all else in it with him. Blasts and bombards, the Ironmaster herself could be in this!”
“Kordroun briefed me,” Ralice said slowly, something strange rising into her gaze. “He told me you and the Ironmaster were once…”
“Lovers, yes,” Gelgur growled. “I didn’t always look this bad, lass.”
“Ralice.”
“Sorry, lass: Ralice. That was a long time ago. So I hear I’m owed an old debt by the Morkantuls, and have accepted as payment a medicine to cure a mysterious ailment that has hold of me—a medicine you, la—Ralice, can make me, if you can get certain herbs out in the Wastes. Which is why you’ve been granted leave from your kitchen duties to depart the Gunworks, and Alkenstar altogether.”
Ralice gave him a wry grin. “I believe I know that tale.” Her grin faded. “So I walk right out into where monsters roam and magic rages.”
“Yes,” Gelgur said simply. “I believe it’s called ‘adventure.’ As opposed to staying here, which would be called ‘a swift and messy death.’”
Ralice nodded, slowly, and extended a reluctant hand. “Then let us have a promises. Hear me: I will not be your bedmate.”
“And I’ll not do the cooking, until you teach me how not to poison us both.”
The grin came back. “Done.”
They shook hands, and walked on, into the night.
Gelgur knew better than to walk the Wastes without looking back often—but neither he nor Ralice ever caught sight of the lone figure skulking after them.
Which was probably a good thing. It would have been tiresome to have to kill Ansel Kordroun twice in one night.
