Rusted Heroes

by Andrew Post

  “Lodi, I—”

  Anoushka felt as if an icicle had been driven deep into her back. The pain drilled through her, snapped out her front, and was gone. She, apparently, was not its target. But it quickly found Otis. A second figure now stood within him, wearing the bumpkin as if he were a hollow statue of glass.

  Eyes Anoushka recognized from the photo in Ruprecht’s office fixed upon her. Lyle Eichelberger estimated Anoushka—eyes poring over her shape as if it were finery on a shop rack just beyond his budget.

  With her outstretched arms shuddering, Lodi inched closer. “I have him. Go!”

  Anoushka tried to pinch herself awake, but her fingers passed through her arm.

  “Unsolid. Think unsolid.”

  Anoushka did, and whatever touch of magick lacing her biology began to buckle. The Hall shattered, stirring into the plunging blackness like cream in dark tea. The floor drifted away, and Anoushka tumbled. Above her, growing small, Lodi and Lyle remained in stalemate.

  Bad Reputation

  “Gods, I thought we were going to have to kick you awake.”

  Smoke-stained wooden beams and dry, brown thatch were above her. The stink of blood and spilled mead returned to Anoushka, spearing her sinuses. The suns had come up—their warmth cutting in through the open barn doors to settle on Anoushka’s face. Kylie-Nae and Zuther helped her up.

  “Mann O. Mahan and his boys are here,” Kylie-Nae whispered.

  Fighting dizziness, Anoushka looked over Kylie-Nae’s shoulder. The pack of newcomers were at the church doors, watching. Clad uniformly in black armor, a bonk-eyed, scar-faced man stood at the head. Mann O. Mahan, Anoushka assumed. Next to him, one of Mann’s Blackiron Blaggards was winding a spiralphone. Straw-colored hair, narrow chin, and a crooked nose from a childhood kerfuffle over a girl—if Anoushka remembered Erik’s story right.

  Their eyes met. As on the day he first showed up at the mill, introducing himself and offering his hand, they both gave a pause. Time crawled for a couple of heartbeats. But whereas back then Anoushka’s heart had sped up because she was very taken by him, now her heart beat and her hands went numb and her upper lip tingled . . . because she wanted, greatly, to hit him until he begged her to stop. Still, even if their competition had caught up to them—with her ex-boyfriend now in the gang—seeing him was far better than seeing the riders the Committee had dispatched.

  But there was no time for introductions (or reintroductions). Not with this rare chance with Lyle.

  “Russ,” Anoushka managed past the banging in her skull, “hold him.”

  Russell hoisted Otis Kelly into one of the chairs and pressed him in place by the shoulders. As the man’s face began to convulse, Zuther fetched some rope, left over from when the Aurorineans still used this space as a shelter for their animals, and bound Otis.

  Eyes shooting open, Lyle Eichelberger took in those before him. He wrenched against the bonds and smirked. “Quick thinking. You sure got me.”

  Anoushka pointed at Lodi. “Kylie. Check her.”

  Kylie-Nae put two fingers to Lodi’s wrist. The wizardess’s eyes were crushed tightly closed, her chest heaving in quick huffs.

  Anoushka drew. Lyle, wearing the man, stared at her, past the mammoth-killer mashing his nose, and issued a small amused sound.

  “Where are you?” Anoushka demanded.

  “Right here.”

  Anoushka ratcheted back the gun’s hammer. “Where are you?”

  Otis’s bulldog face jerked into a coy smile. “Here, silly.”

  “Russ, the overeager hitchhiker, if you would,” Anoushka said.

  “Aye.” Russell grabbed the man’s wrist and bent his thumb back—and then further back. Lyle’s flesh-mask of Otis Kelly was scoffing and chuckling—then abruptly not, snorting a shocked intake of breath. He goggled at the broken thumb touching nail to sweat-stained shirt cuff, then over at Lodi asleep on the floor. She grew a faraway grin.

  “Ready to talk?” When he still didn’t answer, Anoushka holstered. Shooting him would only free him. “Take off his boots.”

  Zuther bent to tug off the man’s dung-caked boots, followed by his holey socks. Russell, understanding, wrapped Otis’s left foot in the crook of his elbow so the man’s bare clammy sole was out, presented. Anoushka bent, took out her boot knife, and snapped open the short blade.

  “Didn’t care for the hitchhiker? How about the reverse ice skate?” Ready with the blade’s tip to Otis’s heel, Anoushka said, “Are you in New Kambleburg?”

  A tiny mote of fear flickered in stolen eyes. “Did you hurt Sharona?”

  “Yes. Now answer my question.”

  “Is she dead?”

  “Answer me first. No? All right,” Anoushka said and dragged the knife up his arch, slowly, to the tip of his big toe.

  “Stop, stop, stop!”

  Russell fought to hold Otis’s bucking leg. The chair creaked and cracked, but held.

  “Where are you?” Anoushka shouted and drew the knife tip up a second time, digging a parallel slice. She screwed the point into the delicate flesh between the toes as if tightening a bolt. “Now!”

  “Excuse me, gentlemen, excuse me.” Ruprecht, shoving through the Blackiron Blaggards, came charging up the central aisle, ducking under the leather strap of his portable spiralphone. “Wait, wait! I need to get this!” Pushing between Anoushka and Russell, Ruprecht cranked the wax to spinning, aiming the brass bell, close, into the necromancer’s hijacked face. “Lyle Eichelberger, what provoked you to go against your realm?”

  “The author,” Lyle said at a whisper, struggling to eke a haughty tone through his pain.

  Loudly, in order for his voice to be scratched onto wax, Ruprecht asked, “Why did you abandon Rammelstaad? What did the War King offer you? What made you—?”

  “I got this,” Anoushka said. “Ruprecht, move. Let me handle this. We haven’t got a ton of time.”

  “But I need to know why he went against the realm! An antagonist needs to have a believable motive to give the rag internal logic!”

  Kylie-Nae tore off her belt, doubled it over, and wedged it between Lodi’s gnashing teeth. The wizardess’s heels banged out an unsteady beat on the dusty floorboards. Her hands and knees drew, knotted, to her chest, as if she were trying to find a warm shelter inside her rib cage.

  “Make something up,” Anoushka said. “Because we only need to know for sure, Ruprecht, is where he is.”

  “The Ma’am,” Lyle said, silencing them all, “claims one thing but does another. Condemns the radios and the music from the ether, reviles magick, but will use them all when they suit her. I agree that the music was not meant to be heard by us. Following the songs’ arrival, one could measure Rammelstaad’s youth’s rapid transfixion on heroes. I’m sure it isn’t a coincidence. But here I am the hypocrite; I use the radios too. But I have to hand it her, the Ma’am saw a cycle she could use and set her throne right on top as it spun: stories and songs that convinced each successive batch of fools to squabble over whose turn it was to dive into the fire—just for a chance at earning knighthood.”

  Still cranking fast, Ruprecht edged his pointy shoes closer. “But why join the enemy? Couldn’t you simply quietly disagree with the way things are run? Is it because you were rejected from joining the scryers?”

  “The rejection—and threat of incarceration for not having registered—opened my eyes, I’ll concede,” Lyle said through Otis’s lips. “But I sided with the orcs because at least they, the enemy, understand that serving their War King means nothing. They want to kill. Cause pain. No deeper meaning to justify destroying it—desiring it, I mean. Ahem. No higher calling to serve someone who’s decided they’re the ones, divinely assigned, to be ‘in the right.’”

  “Enough.” Anoushka jammed the knife tip into Otis’s ear. “Are you in New Kambleburg—yes or no?”

  With his head crushed to one side, trying to shake the knife away, Lyle said through Otis’s chaw-stained teeth, “You want fame and glory,
to forge an unbreakable cache in this world. But it means nothing, none of it—”

  The knife went deeper. “Tell me where you are, asshole.”

  Kylie-Nae tried to hold Lodi to the floor. “Annie, she’s . . .”

  Otis’s eyes began rolling loose, lids fluttering—Lyle was breaking free. “All you have is your need for the decision makers to assign purpose,” he said. “Nothing waits after we die. No Aurorin stands with open arms to greet us, no Teanna, the sun-bride, no Nae goddess with nine tits, no Shumbulha elf-god. Death is a door to nothing, but I step back through it, again and again, to show how we’re being used, same as I use the dead. Two hundred people in New Delta City die a day, on average. Sick, old, the murdered. And where are they kept? The crypt, under the city.”

  “Is that your goal?” Ruprecht said. “To overtake the capital? To kill the Ma’am?”

  Across the room, Lodi took in a sharp breath—held it, held it—then wheezed a long sigh, her chest collapsing. Lip-to-lip, Kylie-Nae made it rise again, pushing air into her lungs, but she wouldn’t draw it herself.

  Anoushka looked back at Otis Kelly. Pupils, huge and empty, stared up at her. His little coy smile fell away, relaxing. Gone.

  Ruprecht stopped cranking his spiralphone. The wax paused under the needle, ending that track. A fragile string of cut wax curled to the floor, silent. “Maybe I should’ve had Peter ask the questions. Next time. Okay, everyone? We can’t be having the secondary cast leading the investigation—”

  Anoushka whirled, grabbed the sides of Ruprecht’s spiralphone, and tore it away from him. Lifting it overhead, ignoring the bard’s shrieking pleas, she shattered it onto the floor. The brass bell rolled away with a lopsided spin, the cylinder’s new delicate grooves mashed together, ruined. As he tried picking up the pieces, calling her every pejorative against her as a snow-elf and a woman, Anoushka dragged Ruprecht to his feet and shoved him—and sent him tumbling over the mismatched church chairs.

  “We could’ve had an answer,” she said. “If he’s not in New Kambleburg, we could’ve gone wherever he is instead. At this moment, we have no choice but to go.”

  “I needed to have recorded, in wax, what his motivation for all this was. A nemesis has to be at least partly understandable to the reader—” Ruprecht raised his hands as Anoushka drew, resting her aim upon the silk chest of his absurd doublet. “Have you lost your mind?”

  Ruprecht looked to Russell, Zuther, and Kylie-Nae, who was still trying to resuscitate Lodi. They backed away, letting their captain do what she would. Glancing over his shoulders, keeping his hands up, he looked to Mann O. Mahan, Erik Redmondt, and the other Blackiron Blaggards. Together, in unison, they collectively took a big step out of the church. Even for a fellow bard, they wouldn’t intervene, not for Ruprecht. And—of course—Peter, the protagonist, was nowhere to be seen.

  “I’m gonna ask this one time, Ruprecht,” Anoushka said. “Are you working with him?”

  “With who? What’re you—?”

  She raised the barrel—from his heart to his head, so full of lies. “Lyle. Are you working with him?”

  “What? Absolutely not! What an insidious thing to suggest!” Ruprecht glanced toward his competition, Mann O. Mahan, and specifically the Blaggard cranking the spiralphone catching every syllable. He paused a moment, seeing Erik’s face. He recognized him. A thump on the collarbone by Anoushka’s gun barrel brought him back to focus.

  “I’d never! Rammelstaad is my home, the realm of my birth! I’d sooner—”

  “Why Ellis Buckley?” Anoushka said.

  “Who?”

  “You damn well know who. Why did you have him and his family killed to frame Peter? You had Peter sent to Breakshale, knowing you’d use him for a story later, when you needed him, like when you were on the verge of bankruptcy, for example.”

  “I have never met Ellis Buckley in my life. Why would I have him killed? And why would I frame Peter to do it?”

  Mann O. Mahan, with a voice like a pail of nails, said, “Ellis Buckley wrote for a magazine, a theater critic. The theater critic. But please continue. Sorry to interrupt.”

  “Not helping your case, Ruprecht,” Anoushka said.

  Beside them, Lodi dragged herself up into a seated position. “The plot thickens,” the wizardess said, with a voice not her own.

  Jumping back from the woman she was moments ago trying to save, Kylie-Nae fired into the side of the wizardess’s head. Lodi lay flung onto her side.

  “Fuck,” Kylie-Nae said and sighed.

  “Holy shit,” Mann O. Mahan said and laughed. “Did you boys see that?” His men attempted to ape his bravado but fell short—each roughneck’s titter sounded as fake as the next.

  “Oh gods. Oh gods,” Ruprecht stammered, staring wide-eyed at Lodi’s corpse.

  “Focus,” Anoushka shouted. “You said your plays weren’t well received. Were they not well received by Ellis Buckley in particular?”

  “He didn’t like them, no, b-but I never paid much attention to n-names of the uncultured sh-shits writing the reviews. I had no quarrel with the man.”

  Anoushka stepped aside to block Ruprecht’s view of Lodi’s corpse. “Did you see a way to not only put Peter in layaway while simultaneously make things square with someone who did you wrong? What of Ellis’s wife and sons? Did they have a hand in besmirching your good name too?”

  “Please, Miss Demaine. Lyle’s trying to undermine us,” Ruprecht said. “Can’t you understand that? I understand things look bad, they really do, but I promise you, all of you, I didn’t kill anyone. I’ll admit when I heard Ellis Buckley and his family had met with misfortune, I—shamefully enough—was marginally pleased, but I had no involvement in his demise or that of his family. Please, Lyle’s trying to make us turn against each other. Believe me, I’m telling the truth, Miss Demaine.”

  “Why were you at his sentencing?”

  “Whose sentencing?”

  “For fuck’s sake—Peter’s.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “He said you were,” Anoushka shouted.

  “Where is he? We’ll ask him.” Ruprecht turned. “One of you there—Mann or one of your fellows—if you’re not too busy gawking, would you mind fetching the large individual in plate armor?”

  None of them moved. Not until their scarred-up Blaggard leader gave a small nod. A moment later—everyone waiting, circled around Anoushka, who still held Ruprecht at gunpoint—Peter entered, the Blackiron Blaggards giving him a wide berth at the door. Teetee followed but again, only to the doorway. Noticing Ruprecht under Anoushka’s aim, Peter stopped short. As obvious as it was that he was surprised, his expression slipped only momentarily before hardening solemn again.

  “Peter,” Ruprecht said, “Miss Demaine here claims you said I was at your sentencing for killing Ellis Buckley and his family.”

  Peter’s gaze moved between Ruprecht and Anoushka.

  “A protagonist has to be an honest individual,” Ruprecht continued, his tone temperate, “one in whom the reader can place, fully, their trust—”

  “Let him think for himself,” Anoushka cut in.

  “You weren’t there, Mr. LeFevre. I am mistaken.” Peter’s heavy gauntlet rose to his breastplate, where the corner of Dark Against Dark’s cover page was peeking out. Pausing there, considering whether to tug free the parchment page splinter between his armor’s plates or to leave the foreign object to continue poisoning him. His hand continued up—and slapped shut his helm grille. “Please lower your weapon, Captain.”

  Anoushka lowered the gun but not her argument. “We need the truth.”

  With a graceful little slide, Ruprecht stepped next to Peter. “I think it might be wise, Peter, to firmly but fairly remind your team that mutiny needs to be promptly rooted out, that deceit is a—”

  Knocking Ruprecht aside with his shoulder, Peter stomped forward and curled back his arm. Anoushka tried avoiding the blow, but the steel battering ram of his fist met with her cheek befor
e she could even think to duck. She was sent sprawling, the back of her head knocking hard on the floor.

  Kylie-Nae thrust a finger up into Peter’s face. “Do that again and I’ll fucking open you.”

  Anoushka thought some of the studding on Peter’s gauntlet had come loose and somehow gotten in her mouth. But spitting into her hand, instead, she found two bloody teeth. Russell and Zuther moved to help her up, but she waved them off and stood on her own.

  “That punishment fitting enough according to our hero, you suppose?” she said to Ruprecht, with a new lisp. She glowered at Peter. “Or do you think he’d like some counsel about whether I deserve more?”

  His armored creaked as Peter wound back again.

  Anoushka didn’t move. Before the blow could be loosed, Russell stepped next to Kylie-Nae and shrugged off his suspenders and rolled up his sleeves. “Ye ruined us once, lad. I won’t let it happen again.”

  “Yeah,” Zuther said, moving up too. Though his hands were balled to fists, his knees shook.

  Anoushka took her place in the middle of the line.

  For a better part of a minute, everyone remained an angry statue. There’d been arguments between them in the past. But never quite like this. A bloody lip or a black eye was a common outcome for their worst teammate-against-teammate disputes—but, here, now, they might kill one another, all while Anoushka’s ex-boyfriend recorded the entire embarrassing event.

  Anoushka stared into Peter’s dark brown eyes, which shone through the slats in his helm’s faceplate.

  Ruprecht, apparently unable to stomach the tension any longer, tittered. “Okay, okay, everyone. I think that’ll suffice.” The bard approached Anoushka, leaning in close. “I told you to stay in line, didn’t I? You’re this close, Miss Demaine.” He pinched the air. “This close.”

  “Don’t fucking threaten me.”

  “Don’t give me need, Miss Demaine.” Ruprecht let the moment hang—then gave her his back. Peter remained looking over the heads of the others toward Anoushka a moment longer. Face hidden as it was, an apology for what he’d done couldn’t be discerned—if any was there. He turned away to approach Mann O. Mahan with Ruprecht.