Construct

by Luke Matthews

  “Sometimes, Samuel, we just do what we need to do.”

  Samuel had no response, barely able to gather his own thoughts. Again they were still, each contemplating his own move. Both snapped out of their thoughts when the sounds of voices echoed through the alley, coming closer by the second. The man whose arm Samuel had broken began to stir, moaning and moving his head. The necessity to vacate the scene made all other decisions moot. Samuel pulled the hood of his cloak over his head and turned to leave.

  “Samuel, wait.” A momentary pause. Samuel didn’t turn. “I…I can show you the back way, help you figure out where to go next.”

  “I know where I’m headed,” Samuel said. “And I don’t need your help to get there.”

  Samuel walked away, leaving the other standing in the muddy alleyway under a torrent of autumn rainfall. He stepped around Cort’s body without looking, but made note the other two men were breathing. They were, at least, still alive. At the end of the alleyway Samuel pressed himself against a wall, leaning out to check the intersection. With no pursuers in sight, he moved across the street, following the sound of the stream and hoping he’d eventually run into the main road. He stopped, for just a moment, and allowed himself to look back over his shoulder into the alley where he’d fought for his—and one other’s—life. No one was there but Cort and his men.

  • • • • •

  Traversing the town on his own proved more of a chore than Samuel had anticipated. Morrelton’s streets and alleys were curvy and unpaved and had turned to a soft muck in the rainy evening. Each intersection was a new lesson in anxiety. As he moved closer to the street where he…they…had turned toward Atherton’s shop, he saw more and more guardsmen, and even some townsfolk making their way out into the blustery evening to see what had happened. Avoiding detection would be easy amongst the windy passageways and odd-shaped buildings of the strange forest town. Finding alcoves in which to hide was simple, and in the driving rain, guardsmen were more preoccupied with staying dry than performing a diligent search.

  But keeping his sense of direction wasn’t easy here. As he moved, the sounds of people and guardsmen became less frequent. Several times he had to stop as his mind tried to reconcile the flood of random images that had come to him after he blacked out. He hadn’t had another bout of visions yet—and hoped he wouldn’t anytime soon—but trying to push the ones that were there to the background long enough to concentrate on the task at hand was difficult, especially without the stress of defending himself to keep his attention focused.

  At one point, the alley spilled out onto the main road, with no easy intersection to go back to and find another way round. This far to the north end of town the road was almost empty. For the few people he did encounter, he buried himself deep within his cloak and hurried by, making out like he didn’t want to be out in the rain any more than they did. He was glad no one took a lingering look at his feet. Even though the main road may have remained uncluttered until the edge of town, he decided to veer onto another series of side streets for the remainder of his trip out of Morrelton, just to be safe.

  Eventually, the buildings thinned and gave way to more and more foliage. Larger gaps between the buildings were filled with trees and shrubbery rather than grass and mud, and the forest canopy grew thicker. Samuel wasn’t too keen on travelling through the raw forest if he could avoid it and so took the chance to return to the main road.

  When he saw he was out of town, he froze. With the rush of imagery still slamming his brain, the anxiety of his escape, the betrayal of the only person he’d been able to call a friend, and the raw emotion of what had happened in Atherton’s shop, Samuel stood paralyzed by the roadside. There was no telling how long he’d stared off into the rain before he regained himself, but it was the memory of Michael’s instructions—find the Bleeding Pine and the trail to his apprentice friend in the forest—that snapped him out of his stupor. He bid Morrelton farewell and set off into the night.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  * * *

  Colton was glad to put Cinth at his back, but his anger at backtracking across the plains toward Winston was inconsolable. Cinth wasn’t the most pleasant of cities, but at least it was a city. A place where one could find anything, for the right price. A place where you could vanish and never be seen again, if you wanted. Winston and the rest of the towns in the eastern plains were nothing more than collections of ambitionless dirt farmers who didn’t have the wherewithal to make something better of themselves.

  If Colton was angry, Bales was outright livid. The idea he had missed something dug under his skin like a splinter, and he was more determined to prove it a lie than to make it right. He rode lengths out ahead of Colton, barreling down the plains road as the driving rain and whistling wind battered his face and hands. He was going to kill his horse, and perhaps himself, if he wasn’t careful. Then again, when was Bales ever careful?

  They’d been on the road all day and into the night, and it didn’t seem Bales had any intention of slowing. Colton didn’t object; they needed to be back on task as soon as possible. He kept mulling over the burned-out skeleton of Ferron’s shop in Winston. The melted remains of the construct sat exactly where they had been, and Ferron’s bones lay charred in the room close to where they’d left him. Anything else that might’ve been in the room would be nothing but charred dross. It pained him to admit it, even to himself, but he was beginning to agree with Bales—something here wasn’t right.

  At this rate, they’d reach Winston in two days, and who knows what might be left of the artificer’s shop by then. All he could hope was there’d be some kind of clue pointing them in the right direction. Taeman’s caravan was, no doubt, already well south of Winston by now, too far to detour if what his letter said was true. If they found nothing of importance in Winston, they would head north, possibly as far as Morrelton. Colton despised that forest town more than almost any place he’d ever seen. The duplicity of a nature commune with an affinity for constructs made his skin crawl, and he wished the forest would burn and take Morrelton with it.

  The rain continued to fall in sheets, making their nighttime flight across the plains a blind one. Wet and cold seeped through to Colton's bones, but he pushed thoughts of his discomfort aside, driving his horse harder to keep up with Bales’s relentless pace.

  • • • • •

  Walking along the main road at night, in the rain, was only marginally easier than slogging through the alleys of Morrelton. The road was solid somewhere underneath, but with each step, Samuel’s feet sank into the soft surface and came free with a plok, leaving behind little pools of muddy water. The wind howled through the treetops and thrashed the branches of the tall evergreens together. Needles and leaves fluttered down around him as the relentless rain battered the forest. Samuel hoped he was alone on the road; the cacophony kicked up by the storm made it impossible to hear another’s approach.

  The rain continued throughout the night, but Samuel didn’t stop for shelter. Without a companion who required sleep or sustenance, he resolved to continue moving until he’d found what he was looking for. It was late into the night when he came to the crossroads, the left fork leading off at an angle into the forest while the right fork headed due east, rising into the hills. Consideration of the left fork never even rose in Samuel’s mind. There were questions to be answered, and he was going to find someone who could answer them. Besides, it wasn’t like he had another lead to follow.

  The rain abated near the end of the second day. The road was a steady eastward climb into the hills that would become the northern end of the mountain range to the east. The mixed forest of the lowlands gave way to tall pines and firs, hemmed by thick undergrowth. Several times during his walk, Samuel was forced to stop, his balance failing him as the images swirling through his mind reorganized and attempted to reconcile with one another. None of the scenes seemed to connect, each a separate and encapsulated string of imagery with no beginning or definitive closure. Al
though he never blacked out like he had at Atherton’s, faces and names ran roughshod over his mind, blotting out his surroundings until he could calm the maelstrom and push it to the back of his thoughts. Some memories were weak, flashes of still imagery or half-recalled details, while others were clear and strong, like the face of the scarred man with silver eyes.

  His memories bore with them a calm detachment, a lack of emotion Samuel found unsettling. The images played in front of him, accompanied by an analysis of facts and outcomes, but never lending insight on how he felt, as though he were looking at his own memories from the outside. Amongst the emotionless visions, pangs of sadness echoed through him at more recent memories of Michael. He was the only person who had been genuine with Samuel from the start. At best, he could almost convince himself Atherton’s madness had been at fault in Michael’s death; at worst, it was a question he didn’t know the answer to.

  He slowed his pace one morning, searching the roadside in earnest for anything falling under the description of Bleeding Pine. The forest closed in on either side, tall walls of green framing a thin strip of white sky high above. He was grateful the branches didn’t cross the road as much as in the lower forest. It felt brighter here, less claustrophobic, which he hoped would make finding the Bleeding Pine easier. It wouldn’t be long before sunset, and he knew he’d have to stop until morning whether he felt he could go on or not. With only partial knowledge of what he was looking for, Samuel worried he might already have missed it. Every tree within sight of the road had been scrutinized—whether it was a pine or not—and he’d found nothing he could even associate with the name. Nothing red, nothing oozing, no distinguishing marks or interesting properties.

  As Little Blue chased Big Sister past the gap in the trees overhead, a weak reflection glinted at the edge of Samuel’s vision. He moved to the middle of the road and found the source about a hundred yards away. Samuel abandoned his careful search, pursuing the reflection in the fear, with the movement of the suns, he might lose it. He moved fast, his sight fixed on the one spot where a multitude of tiny reflected lights danced before his eyes, and instantly understood.

  Before him stood an ancient pine tree, almost eight feet across at its base. It didn’t seem any taller than its neighbors, but it was obviously older. Gnarled and twisted branches were covered with thick waves of long, heavy needles toward their ends that grew thin closer to the trunk. The roots of the old tree twisted up out of the ground and back in, claiming sole ownership of a wide area around its base where no other undergrowth could be seen. From the dark forest soil to as far upward as Samuel could see into its branches, the trunk was covered in layer upon layer of running sap. Sticky rivulets wound through a craggy landscape of long-hardened pitch. The fading sunlight sparkled in starlight reflections on its surface and penetrated the translucent amber so rich in color its reddish-brown hue almost glowed.

  Samuel was relieved to have found the landmark, but his trek was not yet over. According to Michael, his destination lay some distance into these unknown woods, along a trail that might not be so easy to find or follow. Now that Samuel was on his own, what if he couldn’t find the trail? Getting lost in the northern wilderness wasn’t high on Samuel’s list of things to do. Then again, standing out on the mountain road staring into the forest wasn’t either.

  The suns sank out of view over the treetops to the southeast, burning the sky a dusky orange as nighttime approached. Samuel stepped off the road and into the embrace of the Bleeding Pine, looking for any clues he could find in the failing light. A circle of hard-packed earth with little vegetation surrounded the tree, ringed at its edges by the low bushes and vines typical of the rest of the undergrowth here. The hedgewall at the outside of the circle was broken in several places, but none led very far back into the forest. Samuel moved around to the north side of the tree, opposite the road, a wide break in the foliage offering a sign of hope. The sun must have slipped over the mountains; the red had faded from the sky and the forest descended into darkness.

  Samuel took the plunge into the gap in the brush, deciding he was better off moving than standing still. He felt invigorated after reaching the Bleeding Pine, and moving onto the trail brought with it both excitement and uncertainty. As twilight deepened he stopped, his vision momentarily hindered as his world transitioned from color and light to the blue-grey monotone of his night vision. There would be no starlight or moonlight here to provide the glittering highlights he’d seen on his first night out on the plains, but even in the darkness under the forest canopy he could make out every tree, leaf, root and rock in sharp detail.

  After moving a few feet out of the Bleeding Pine’s influence, the path could barely be called a trail. Samuel thought he might not have even been able to follow it in daylight, but his vision in the darkness gave him a unique view, the greys and whites of the surrounding leaves framing a thin black path where the undergrowth moved aside for regular travelers. The path was not cut away or cleared, so to untrained eyes it might not be visible, especially not at night. Although the trail was easy for Samuel to see, he knew it would not always be easy for him to negotiate as he traveled deeper into the woods. He had no idea what to expect of the terrain, and no concept of what he’d find at the trail’s end.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  * * *

  Much of the ruin of the artificer’s shop had been cleaned or removed. Ferron’s bones no longer lay in the back room. The melted slag of former constructs would have been taken as scrap and sold, no doubt to Taeman as his troupe passed through Winston on their path southward. Driving rain ran in a constant stream off of the corners of Colton’s hat. His boots were covered in grey-brown muck as the running mud mixed with ash.

  Bales had been in a foul mood as they approached the plains town, muttering obscenities and slurs against the rural populace, exclaiming his distaste for being driven back here by what he called a “filthy load of lies from the hand of an untrustworthy slug.” He’d insisted they ride straight through from Cinth, which extended even Colton’s abilities to their limits. When they reached Winston, their horses were already dead, only waiting for Colton to release them. The effort of driving them forward had exhausted him, leaving little energy for the search by the time they unsaddled the horses and carried their tack to the edge of town.

  “Damnit.” Bales stared into a pile of bricks and burned supports, which now covered the floor of what was once the shop’s back room. He let out an unintelligible scream, kicking a blackened ceiling support that cracked under the blow. The sound died quickly in the storm, but Colton was sure the entire town must have heard him.

  “I haven’t the strength to keep diverting their attention from your petulance, Bales.” Colton said through gritted teeth. Beneath his rain-soaked leather coat he was sweating, which only enhanced the chill.

  Bales stamped over to Colton, pulling off his hat and running a gloved hand over his greasy black hair. “Then what, your mightiness, would you suggest we do now?”

  “I’d suggest, first, you calm down and quiet yourself.” Colton stepped around Bales to the back of the ruin, took a deep breath, and rooted through the rubble. It looked as though much of the debris from the front part of the building had been removed, but some had been tossed into semi-organized piles. Nothing of value remained and the room was now buried in broken supports, skeletons of bookshelves, and pieces of unsalvageable workbenches.

  “Nothing escaped this!” Bales yelled over the din of the driving rain. “There’s no way any construct survived this fire!”

  Colton couldn’t deny what Bales was saying. The fire was intense enough to cut off any construct’s connection to khet long enough for their core to drain. The more pertinent fact was that Colton had ensured their target was immobilized and near destruction before Bales had even set the fire, which was necessary to destroy the evidence of Ferron’s murder. They’d seen the construct’s remains in the front room of the shop the day after the fire. Even if something had esc
aped the fire, it wasn’t their quarry, but even that seemed impossible. The destruction from the fire was complete, thanks to Ferron’s alchemy, and there was no way out of the building.

  “You might be right,” Colton replied, hoping he hadn’t said it loud enough for Bales to hear. He worked his way around the back of the room, kicked aside burnt remains of bookshelves, and found an almost intact volume underneath. He picked up the half-charred book and propped it open on his hand as he stepped outside where the shop’s back wall had once stood. It was a thick, leatherbound volume on the alchemical properties of minerals and their applications that read as dry as he would have expected it to. He snapped the book closed, taking a wider look at the room from outside its periphery, seeing nothing else that offered any clues. Bales stared at him with his arms crossed, looking like a drowned rat without his hat on. Colton shook his head and tossed the book onto one of the debris piles in the corner as he made his way back to where his partner waited.

  The book landed heavy. A loud crack escaped from beneath the debris. The entire pile fell into the earth, landing somewhere far below with a splash.

  Colton turned, confused, and Bales raced forward to join him. At the rear corner of the room, a deep hole in the ground replaced the pile of burned boards. The two of them stood over the opening, watching rainfall race past them into the blackness below. Around the rim of the hole was a wood-and-stone framework, the far side of which supported two heavy iron hinges attached to the stubs of broken boards. On the side closest to them, ladder rungs were mounted into the stone side of the hole and descended into darkness.