Thieves' War

by Clayton Snyder

  She cast her eyes down. “I was dead so long, and I am so full of it. It’s cold there. And lonely. Did you know that? When you’re trapped between? And Camor kept me there. They said it was necessary. I was still needed.” She looked up, and bright pinpricks of fury lit her pupils, even as tears threatened the corners of her eyes. “I am so tired, Nenn. I don’t want to be away from you, but I don’t want to be anything anymore. My heart hurts. My body hurts. I just want it to end, and I don’t want you to hurt when it happens.”

  She did cry then, and I leaned over the seat, wrapping her in my arms. Her skin was cold, her tears hot on mine. I pressed my face into her hair and breathed the smell of lilacs and pomegranate, then whispered fiercely into her ear.

  “When the time comes, I will follow you into the dark. And if they won’t open the gates for us, I will bring us back. But you will never have to be alone.”

  Lux nodded against my shoulder. We wiped our eyes, and I gave her a smile. She returned it.

  “Now. Let’s go fuck up a Harrower’s day.”

  We hopped out of the carriage. Cord and Rek watched us exit, but said nothing, though Rek gave a little nod at seeing us walking together. They turned around to look at the temple before us. It stood four stories, a ramp leading downward at its base. The tower itself was wide tapering to a point, flat planes coming off it every few feet in horizontal vanes. The ramp led into darkness, a wide door at the base.

  “What now?” I asked.

  Cord pointed to the door. “We go down, then up. It’s a lot like sex that way.”

  “Who’s ever gone up?” I asked as we walked down the ramp.

  “Oh, you can go up. You just need some straps and a sturdy chain.”

  I looked at Lux. She nodded.

  “Gret’s balls,” I muttered.

  I loosened my knives in their sheathes as we reached the door. Constructed of one piece of solid wood, carvings cavorted across its surface. After inspecting one or two that depicted scenes involving an ostrich and a man in a frock, I decided to find somewhere else to look. Cord stepped up, peering closely at the carvings. He motioned Lux over. She did the same, and they spoke in soft tones for a moment before he backed away. Rek unlimbered the axe from his back, and I drew my knives. Lux reached out, grabbing an enormous pair of carved breasts on something that looked like a lizard with comically short arms, and twisted. I winced, but it seemed to work. Something behind the door creaked and rumbled to life, and it slid to the side.

  Beyond, darkness. I looked in.

  “After you,” Cord said.

  I looked at Rek. “What about him?”

  “Ladies first,” Cord said.

  “Since when?”

  “Ladies always come first,” he smirked.

  “You’re disgusting.”

  “I think you mean charming.”

  “No, she means disgusting,” Rek said, pushing past me.

  “No one appreciates my wit,” Cord said.

  “You’d have to have some for us to appreciate it,” Lux said, also pushing past.

  I grinned at him and followed, leaving Cord to stand at the entrance.

  “I’m lovable!” Cord called after us. “Guys?”

  When we didn’t answer, he let a gruff harrumph, and followed.

  The interior of the tower was only dim for a short distance, a stretch of passage rendered dusty and moldy by the passing of years. I paused as something occurred to me.

  “Where’s your slipweed?” I asked Cord.

  I heard the rustle of fabric as he shrugged. “Where are your cigars?”

  I thought about it. Not only hadn’t I smoked since coming to Vignon, I hadn’t even had a good drunk on. Something was off about this city.

  “Well, that’s fucky,” I said.

  “Fucky is as fucky does,” he said.

  Before I had time to ask him just what in Camor’s slick nipples that meant, we moved from the passage into a wide room, stacked floor to ceiling with bookshelves. Leather spines and stacked scrolls peeked from the shelves, the room smelling of old parchment and dust. A desk in the shape of a half-moon stood before us, a desiccated corpse dressed in a simple blouse with a string of faux pearls around her neck. From the looks of her, she’d been old even when she died.

  “Ah, shit,” Cord said.

  “What?”

  “I’d forgotten about this place.”

  “The Library of the Dead,” Lux said, eyes wide. “I thought it was a myth. The sisters of Our Lady of Perpetual Weeping and Moaning kept it for a millennium. Story was it had burned to the ground.”

  I started at the name of the holy order of nuns that had taken me in as a child.

  “If only,” Cord said. “I had to come here once on expedition from Vignon.”

  “If only we had more time…” Lux said.

  “Ugh,” Cord said. “Just… be quiet. The stairs are at the back.”

  Rek backed up a little, craning his neck to see the top of the shelves, and tipped a small vase. It smashed to the floor with a noise like a boulder smashing into a castle, the sound echoing across the room.

  “Shit,” the big man said.

  The corpse at the desk lurched to life, coughing up a cloud of dust. Lidless eyes glared at us. “SHH,” it said.

  Rustling came from the stacks, and Cord looked around.

  “Way to go, you moose,” he said, the whisper gone from his voice.

  “SHH!” the undead librarian repeated.

  Mist flowed from between the stacks, a low fog that dampened the tattered carpet and sound. The rustling increased in intensity, and from between the shelves, the undead emerged. Still dressed in their habits, they now wore thick leather-bound books as armor, the covers overlapping like plate, spines bent and cracked with age and contortion. Each wielded a long ruler with a metal edge that gleamed wicked sharp in the library’s dim light. Long decayed and skeletal faces peered from the depths of their cowls, their eyes and tongues still wet with the mockery of life.

  They organized into ranks, and marched toward us, rulers raised. Rek shrugged his shoulders and rolled his neck, taking a few practice swings with the axe, the blade whickering through the air.

  Then they were upon us. I pushed Cord behind us while Rek and I went to work, blades flashing. For his part, the axe sundered brittle bone and leather easily enough, and soon he had cleared a circle around himself.

  My knives flashed out again and again, but the old bitches were surprisingly quick, and more than once they scored a line of hot pain across an arm, or my cheek. I’d slammed a blade into the eye of one plump nun, her jaw working as though attempting to admonish me.

  Gore oozed from the socket, and I stepped back as she fell, but not quick enough, and another scored a hit on my stomach. I felt the leather of my jerkin part, then the skin of my stomach, and stumbled back in a panic as more came on, sensing a wounded opponent.

  I threw up my arms as they gathered in, hacking at me. They ripped strips of flesh from my forearms, blood spattering my face and chest. I cried out in pain and dropped my blades as I curled up, more blows raining on my ribs and legs.

  Agony crawled its way into my body, and I fought against the screams that wanted to come. Fear of failure. Fear of death. I refused to voice them. To do so meant I’d given fear the space it wanted, and I would not give it an inch. To do so would only give it space to root and grow in.

  Then, a bright flash, and heat like I’d stepped into a sauna. The crowd was gone , the smoking ruins of the undead roasted where they stood. Curls of steam rolled from scorched hoods as the armor collapsed.

  I looked up at Lux, who wore a wry grin, sweat standing on her forehead. Her palms glowed as though they were brass thrust into a forge, and her eyes bore a fevered look. She snapped her head to the side as Rek growled in frustration, another group of the hellish nuns threatening to overrun him. She raised a hand and they burst into incandescent light, armor suddenly empty, energy streaming from them to her.

&
nbsp; They collapsed, and I did the same, Cord rushing to my side and hastily taking stock of my wounds and bandaging the worst of them with strips of cloth from his pack.

  “Ah, fuck,” Rek said.

  Cord helped me up, and we stared at the far end of the room. A nun, larger than the others and wearing a horned helmet styled from the covers of books, approached. She held a massive warhammer in her fists, also fashioned from books. With a growl, she smashed aside a row of desks meant for study and opened her arms wide in challenge to Rek.

  “Really?” he asked.

  He looked to me, shook his head, then Lux. She shrugged. He sighed and met the big nun—the Arch Nun—on the open floor. The first flurries of massive weapons and bodies was hard to follow, each moving with a grace that belied their size.

  They feinted and parried, each landing a blow that would have severed or crushed one of us easily, but only an annoyance for the other. It was clear however, that Rek was beginning to fatigue, and the Arch Nun was not. The undead don’t tire, after all.

  “She’s a nun, right?” I asked Cord.

  “Yeah…”

  I thought of what I knew of nuns. I thought of their weaknesses. An idea came to me.

  “Rek!” I shouted. “Take off your pants!”

  He ducked a swing of the massive hammer and shot me a wide-eyed look. “How much fuckin’ blood did you lose? You’re starting to sound like that idiot!”

  “Trust me! She’s gonna kick your ass otherwise!”

  As if to prove my point, the massive hammer smashed into his ribs, sending him sliding back and doubling him over. The axe dropped from his hands, and he grunted in pain. The nun advanced.

  “Pants! Now!” I shouted.

  Rek growled in annoyance and ripped his trousers off. Now, we only saw his massive ass. But whatever the Arch Nun saw stopped her in her tracks. The hammer fell from her hands, and one came up to point at his nethers. A high keening wail went up. Rek picked up his axe and beheaded the horrific nun mid-wail, then collected his pants with as much dignity as possible, and redressed.

  He turned to us, eyeing each of us in turn.

  “This never happened. We never tell this story.”

  “Agreed,” I said.

  “Agreed,” Lux said.

  Cord just chuckled and helped me to my feet. I stumbled as I rose, and Cord put a steadying hand on my arm, Lux hurrying over. I ached, and my head swam from blood loss. Part of me was cold, and I knew that to be a bad sign. She looked my wounds over with a concerned eye, poked the deeper ones with tender fingers. The gash on my stomach, she leaned down and smelled.

  “It didn’t split an organ, at least,” she said.

  Her hands still glowing, she laid them on my shoulders. Warmth flowed from them, suffusing my body, and I watched in amazement as the wounds closed. A furious itching followed, replaced shortly after with more warmth, leaving only scars in the end. I probed the long twist of tissue on my stomach, and her fingers met mine, tracing the former wound.

  “Good?” she asked, nose crinkling in a little smile.

  “Yeah,” I returned it, and retrieved my blades. “Thank you.”

  She laid a hand on my cheek, then leaned in and pressed soft lips against my own. Fire lit in my belly for a moment, and I returned the kiss. Cord cleared his throat, and the moment faded.

  “Dungeon of endless danger, remember?” he said. “Harrower network? Dead goddesses’ bones?”

  “For the love of fuck,” I breathed. “You could kill a god’s erection.”

  “And I have1,” he grinned.

  “Cockblocker Cord,” Lux muttered.

  “Thief of Erections,” Rek supplied.

  “Hurtful. I have never stolen an erection. Just hidden it,” Cord said as we passed from the library into the stairwell beyond.

  “I think I just puked a little,” Lux said.

  The stairs split up and down. Cord led us down, into a cellar wide and dank and smelling of lichen and rot.

  “Is it the smell?” he asked.

  “I think it was the thought of you squirreling penises away,” I said.

  “He does like nuts,” Rek said.

  “I really hope something kills me soon,” Cord said as he peered around the corner.

  He jerked, wish granted as his body slumped to the ground, a long quill protruding from his eye. I leaned down and plucked it free, then tugged his body back into cover. He resurrected a moment later with a harsh cough, eye reforming, inflating and filling in. He rubbed it with a grimace.

  “Yeah, it’s here,” he said.

  “Does this seem a little easy to anyone else?” I asked.

  Cord eyed me as he got to his feet. “Sorry, I just died. Easy, how?”

  “You know, waltz in, kill the monster, waltz out. Why are we killing this thing, anyway?”

  He peeked around the corner again, slumping once more as another spine split his skull. Once again, I dragged him back and yanked it out. When he came to, he spat a curse, and hopped to his feet.

  “’Easy’, she says. Fuck.”

  “Ahem, the question?”

  “Oh. It’s the center of their little web network. If we kill it, all those addicts get agitated. If they’re agitated, it makes our job easier.”

  “What job is that?”

  He turned to me, a look on his face that said he was surprised I hadn’t figured it out yet.

  “We’re going to rob them blind, then burn the whole thing down,” he said.

  “Like Midian?” I asked.

  He paused, halfway between turning to look again. “No, not like Midian. The Gentians deserve the whole thing. Fire, pain, death. We’re going to give it to them. There are things you don’t do in life. You don’t torture people who make mistakes. You don’t punish people for doing what’s right. You don’t own other people. There’s a social contract in place, whether people realize it or not, whether they care or not. It’s the idea that you care for one another. That you take care of the lesser of you. It’s what makes civilization work. But people like this, they’ve forgotten. Those things I mentioned, that you don’t do? They’ve broken those tenets, so we’re going to remind them.

  “So, we’re gonna kill this thing, we’re gonna get Fela’s bones, and by then, the whole city should be on edge. All we need is one match.”

  “The party,” Rek said.

  Cord nodded. “Once we’ve got the keys, we take out an ad for free money, so to speak, break the coffer, and let chaos run.”

  “What about the Triad?” Lux asked.

  “Well, them… them we gut like fish. But that’s then. This is now.” He clapped his hands together and rubbed them. “Here’s the plan. I’m gonna die again. While it’s killing me, you three need to run in there and burn it down. But hey—don’t leave me dead for too long. It’s not fun over there.”

  He and Lux shared a look, and I nodded in understanding. With a shout, he leapt around the corner. Quills zipped through the air in an instant, impaling him with the force of a crossbow bolt. Rek and I charged around the corner, roaring a battle challenge, though mine died in my throat.

  The thing in the center of the room was a mottled mass of gray and green, feelers and tentacles covering every surface. They snaked across walls and ceiling, disappearing through the stone and running, presumably, to Vignon. Mouths covered the mass, opening and closing in spasmic motion. Thick ribbed tubes led to each mouth, carrying a steady stream of cut and mutilated flesh. The smell was like that of an abattoir, and I nearly gagged.

  In the meantime, a steady stream of quills was piercing Cord.

  “Just!”

  Dead.

  “Fucking!”

  Dead.

  “Kill it!”

  It finally sensed our presence, and pores opened on the amorphous mass, spraying spines like a deadly shower, and I ducked. Rek simply grunted as they bounced off his hard leather cuirass, and set to work, chopping at the tentacles. I joined in, slicing into the thing. It wailed
and screamed in pain, but once at work, I entered a rhythmic motion, blades hacking up and down.

  Something in the center belched, and a stalk thick as a tree extended. It opened like an eye, revealing rows of teeth, and a tongue covered with rubbery suckers. It lashed out, the tongue wrapping around Rek’s arm, pulling him in. He dropped his axe and started punching the stalk, the sound of his fist striking its flesh like a ham pounding a ham.

  To no end though, and it sucked his forearm to its teeth, the rows gnashing like a thresher. In moments, his bracer was shredded, blood flowing from a myriad of wounds beneath. He grunted in pain and set his feet, yanking the stalk back.

  “Get it!” he said.

  His face was red as a brick as he fought, and I dove in, blades cleaving through the stalk. It squealed and separated, green ichor spraying in a thick fountain, covering Rek.

  “Bleh!” he said, stumbling back.

  More feelers came at us, and I continued to cut. My arms and shoulders were burning, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep it up. Another cluster of feelers came at me, and I moved too slow. They hammered into my head and I went down as several wrapped around my legs, pulling me toward another mouth that had opened in the center.

  “Hey, uh, anyone?” I said. “If someone’s going to save me, now would be a great time. I swear to the gods, if I end up all Ned Stark I’m gonna kick someone’s ass.”

  The ends of the feelers burst into flame, withering away from my skin. Thank the gods for Lux. Another burst set the beast to squealing, and I picked up my knives, wading back in.

  Soon, nearly all its feelers lay in heaps of glistening snot, and with a mighty heave, Rek slammed his recovered axe into the center of the thing. It squealed one last time, and with a burbling gurgle, ceased to pulse with life.

  Cord and Lux joined us, looking down at the thing.

  “Gret’s balls, these are gross,” he said. “Also, who the hell is Ned Stark?”

  “Character in a book. Got in a little over his head.”

  “Was that a pun?”

  “No, they literally cut his head off.”

  “Spoilers, Nenn.”

  “Oh, you were gonna read it?”

  “No. But I hate knowing the end.”