Sunday 29 December 2013

Story 10: The Boy and the Barrow

Trip tossed and turned. No matter which way he lay, the ground seemed bumpy underneath him. There was a stone poking up through the fabric of his bedroll and the cold nipped at his nose. He sighed. Victor’s snores seemed to penetrate the entire fabric of reality, never mind anything else.
The story he had told floated in his mind. One of the tricks they had taught him at the Library to take advantage of his memory was to treat each memory as an island, a piece of rock, floating in an infinite dark gulf. Bridges connected the memories, allowing him to see how one linked to another. With a thought, he could fly, run, walk, from one island to another, reviewing the objects and scenes there.
There was an island large in his mind right now. A frozen scene of battle, an army charging; in one corner, an old man sat around a campfire, the flames frozen as if preserved forever in amber. Children stared at him, rapt attention. In the centre of the charge, a woman in green, her robes almost glowing in the darkness. She was looking directly at Trip, away from the scene.
Curious, he moved closer. The woman’s head moved, her eyes locked on his. Trip licked his lips nervously; the scenes were usually completely still. His feet touched down on the soil of the island and he slowly stepped towards the woman.
Impossibly, she began to move towards him. She stepped carefully around the man in front of her, his arms out, a cruel expression on his face; a soldier, his sword out, was mid-swing towards something or other; she placed a hand on the blade of the sword and moved it easily out of the way.
Trip found himself having to step around flailing legs, soil kicked up and caught in mid-air; an ear, randomly, separated from its owner. He frowned. This wasn’t quite right. There’d been no great battle here. The story he had told wasn’t any different to how he had been told it himself, but this was all wrong.
The woman was… beautiful. She was barefoot, her ankles just visible under the hem of her dress, and her long blonde hair swung as she walked. A bright light blazed at her breast, too bright to tell what it was.
Mesmerised, Trip slowed, then stopped. She walked until she was stood in front of him, then stopped.
“Trip,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Trip,” she said again. “Trip. Come to me.”
“You’re a memory,” he said. “A memory of a memory. You’re something in my head.”
“Even memories have power,” she said, and smiled. The ground began to shake. There was a sound of cracking timbers are bridges snapped under incredible tension.
Trip blinked and gasped. He began to run away from her, the ground sloping up until he was running up a hill that was becoming steeper and steeper; he suddenly remembered that this was his own head and he jumped, flying as far and as fast from the memory as he could.
He turned, looking back, incredulous; the island was closing up, like a dome, and then the land was moving through itself, turning inside out, until the surface was flat again. The bridges to other islands began to slowly reform, like a plant growing in slow-motion, and the characters faded back in.
Trip opened his eyes. The moon was on its way down; it was perhaps past midnight. He’d slept a little, and he lay there for a moment examining the unique feeling of having fallen asleep while viewing memory. Normally the very act of examining a scene kept him awake.

“Victor?” Trip whispered. There was no response, and Trip held his breath.
There was total silence. No snoring. No sound of breathing.
Trip sat up. The fire was out. The moon cast enough light to see that Victor’s bedroll was empty, and Trip felt wings of fear flutter inside his chest. He stood up and looked around.
“Trip,” he heard. A high voice. A woman’s. The voice from his memory/dream, coming from the hill. Trip began to walk towards it, his feet making shushing noises through the grass.
“Trip,” came the voice again. It was almost insubstantial, a whisper, but carried as if on a wind that wasn’t blowing.
The top of the hill was broad, and two figures became visible as he walked. Victor was much closer to the woman, her long green dress glowing slightly in the moonlight. The old man was plodding, almost, each step deliberate and almost taken against his will.
“Stop this now, Trip,” the boy heard Victor say. “This ain’t amusin’”
“Victor!” Trip shouted, and he saw the man’s head jerk around, his body still moving towards the woman. “It’s not me!”
“What the…” Victor muttered, then, as Trip grew nearer, he spoke again. “Yer time is over, woman. Get back to where you belong.”
“Come to me, Trip,” she said in response. “You are the one I have been waiting for. You are the one to complete me.”
Trip opened his mouth to respond, but Victor got there first. “I’m not the one you’ve been waitin’ for, wench,” he growled, and Trip gasped. Victor had heard his own name when the princess spoke!
“Trip, come here,” she said. “I need you.”
“Let go of me,” Victor shouted. “You need to go back to where you come from.”
He was nearly in front of the woman, and she opened her arms wide. “Embrace me,” she said. “It’s been so long,”
“Remira,” Victor said, emotion choking his voice. “Remira, yer dead, my love.”
“Victor…” Trip whispered, and as he took another step closer the woman in green began to change. Her entire form seemed to vibrate in the air, and then she was a different person. Brown hair had replaced the blonde; leather trousers, a white shirt with a leather waistcoat cinched at the waist. A dozen little tools and pieces of equipment stuck out of the many pockets in the coat and trousers, and even the sturdy boots had brass fittings made of tiny cogs. The vision smiled.
“Lauren!” Trip said. Lauren nodded. A bright light burned at her breast.
Victor wrenched his head round. Tears were running down his face, the light from Lauren picking them out as tiny stars. “You blind boy? This is Remira, my…” His face hardened, eyes narrowing, and he bared his teeth. A bestial roar burst out of his mouth and he turned back to the vision.
“You are NOT my wife!” he shouted. “Remira died, years back! I mourned her, I buried her, I moved on.” He forced out a bitter laugh. “You’ve lost. Get back to where you belong.”
As Trip watched, Lauren’s form seemed to shatter, like glass dropped from a great height. As the fragments of her form drifted away into nothing, the woman in the green dress was there again. She snarled, her beautiful features twisting and deforming; her eyes became dark hollows with little red sparks in their depths, and her blond hair began to dance and snake as if static lightning were being run through it. Her lips pulled back from teeth that were suddenly fangs and a long tongue whipped out.
“Then perish,” she screamed, and Trip felt his body pulled inexorably forward at a run. He felt his foot hit something, a stone; he tumbled forward, arms too slow to save him, and crashed into the ground shoulder-first, rolling forward. Everything was a whirl of colour and motion; he heard Victor let out a yell and felt something smack against his side, and then he was staring up at the stars again, a heavy weight across his legs. He sat up, wincing as his head pounded, and looked around.
Victor was on top of him. The man looked as shocked as Trip felt; his sudden arrival had literally taken Victor out at the knees and apparently released whatever hold the princess had on them. Trip scanned the area around them, but could see no sign of the woman. Not a single trace; no disturbed grass, no scrap of glowing green… nothing.
“Are you all right?” he asked Victor. The old man grunted. “Can you get off, please? My legs hurt.”
Victor wriggled off of Trip and clambered to his feet. Trip gasped as pain coursed through his shins, but the pain dimmed as he climbed gingerly to his feet.
“Where’s that she-witch gone?” Victor said.
“Back. To… wherever she came from.”
“I want her back ‘ere,” the man growled, “Show ‘er a piece o’ my mind!”
“No!” Trip said, icy fear gripping him. “No, Victor. We need to go. Now.” He grabbed Victor’s upper arm, starting to pull him away. “This place isn’t safe.”
Victor allowed Trip to pull him back down on to the path. “Yeh,” he murmured, “Maybe it’s best we get an early start.” He shook himself and looked at the sky. “Nearly dawn.”
There was silence as they packed up the camp, and birds began to trill their morning chorus. Trip tried to avoid looking at Victor directly, but it was clear that the man wasn’t interested in talking about it or even acknowledging anything had happened.
In short order Trip was sipping from his bottle of brackish water as Victor shouldered the larger pack. He corked the bottle and stowed it in his own pack.
“Who was Remira?”
“Damnit boy, y’had to ask,” Victor said, scowling. He sighed. “Remira was my wife. Talked about her once or twice, maybe not by name.”
“She died, didn’t she.”
“Aye.”
Trip took a step forward. “I’m-“
“Don’t give me yer pity, boy. If I had a gold coin fed every time someone’d pitied me… well, I’d have a gold coin right there.” Victor stared at Trip as if daring him to contradict him.
Trip shook his head. “I saw Lauren. Is she dead?”
“Not that I know, boy.” Victor turned and wait while Trip walked up next to him. “Want to go visit her?”

“Aye,” Trip said gruffly, and together they walked away from the hill.

Saturday 28 December 2013

Story 10: The Boy and the Barrow

For the tenth story, I knew that I wanted to return to Trip and Victor. This was also a genre I haven't really tried; horror. I think it turned more into surrealism that actual suspenseful storytelling, but I'm sure I can practise. It's not really my forté but I'm sure I can work on that!


The hillside sloped lazily down towards the path and Trip ran down it, gleefully pinwheeling his arms around. The wind whipped his robes around him and teased at the stubbly hair growing through on his head. He reached the bottom, sandals crunching on the gravelly road, and looked back up the hill. Like some dark patch of treacle slowly sliding down a wall, Victor was making his surly way towards the path.
The man looked older, Trip thought. Visibly. Like the events of Fennica, just a few short weeks, had aged him. He was still made of boot leather and twice as tough, but there was a definite slouch that hadn’t been there.
I should do something for him, was the thought that started it all. Trip looked around, got his bearings, and grinned as a memory rose up in his mind.
-Sitting by the firelight, on a camping trip away from the monastery-
-Books read by candlelight, restricted books, but fun-
-The look on Simon’s face, Joel’s behind him, as he retold the stories-
Trip felt a pang of sorrow. The Library was gone, the children scattered, the book-keepers dead or captured. Some malevolent force, whatever had animated Father Liam, whatever had given High Father Hork his immense power and whatever had subverted the tree at Fennica had launched attacks on Rootholme and the Library simultaneously. Hork had tried his best to blame it on the Gargorians - who had themselves confirmed the attack on Rootholme - but the Library was squarely on Hork’s conscience. What was left of it. The man was dead, after all.
Scowling, Trip realised that the train of thought and memory had taken him to a place he didn’t want to be. 
“You a’right, boy?” Victor growled.
“Yeah,” Trip replied. He waved at the hill. “It’s a barrow, y’know. The tomb of a king.”
Victor looked back at the hill. “That so? Well, good fer it,” he said, and turned to walk along the path.
“Ritania. King Ritania,” Trip said. “There’s a story to go with it. A campsite story.” He smiled suddenly, an idea occurring to him. “You want to hear it?”
“We ain’t campin’ here.”
“We could,” Trip said. “There’s a stream a short distance away; I remember it on the map.”
“‘Course you do,” Victor said, then sighed. “Well, I can’t say I’d complain. Feet’re feelin’ m’age.”
It didn’t take long to make camp. Trip was well used to it by now; Victor would sit down on a log or something similar and watch while the boy made a fire, set up cooking equipment, unrolled bedrolls and generally took care of the business of the day. Horses would have been fed, but they’d had to sell them in the previous town in exchange for food.
The light was well and truly fading by the time a simple soup was cooked, and Trip silently gave thanks that copying out long tracts from ancient cookbooks had given him at least a working knowledge of food preparation. He dug out two chipped wooden bowls from his pack and poured soup into both of their bowls, a little more into Victor’s.
“‘Ere now,” the old man said. “T’other way around with them bowls.”
Trip rolled his eyes, but took the one with more in it. His stomach reminded him that it was a good thing he did, but his heart sank a little as he seemed to watch Victor fade every day.
“Tell me this story then, boy,” Victor said, putting his empty bowl down. In the morning, one of Trip’s first jobs would be to wash the bowl and return it to the pack along with the rest of the cooking equipment.
Trip closed his eyes and allowed the memory to wash over him.
“In the dim and distant past, when the Grand Concord was still wet with ink, there was a king,” he began. “King Ritania of Southern Dorth. He wasn’t really the king, of course; just a pretender, one of many that Dorth spawned.” He placed his own bowl down on top of Victor’s and settled in to the tale.
“This king was consumed by greed and envy. He saw what others had and lusted after it. He took what he could by force, by coercion, by legitimate trade, but it was never enough. 
“He heard about a princess of a tiny neighbouring kingdom, one that doesn’t exist now, called Yol. The princess was reputed to be the most beautiful in all Ehrian, so beautiful that a star had fallen in awe at her and now blazed at her breast on a chain of the finest silver.
“Naturally, Ritania yearned for both the princess and her treasure, so he arranged for a diplomatic envoy to be sent to Yol. It returned minus the envoy’s head.
“Incensed at this, Ritania ordered his elite group of soldiers to go in and take her by force. One by one, their horses returned, each bearing a rider tied to his mount. Their heads were tied to a final horse, which had been sent to bear the princess back.”
The fire crackled and popped, and the small sounds of the night seemed to have dimmed as Trip warmed to his tale. The words flowed easily, interpreting his memory and couching it in terms he might use as a boy, rather than the adult who wrote it; a skill he was finding more and more useful.
“Ritania decided that this was enough that he could go to war. He gathered his armies, pitiful compared to what we might muster today, and rode out on the back of his charger.
“They rode for three days and three nights, and when they reached the borders of Yol they halted, for the grass was blackened in an almost-perfect line where the map stated Yol began. The trees beyond the divide were leafless and grey, and a perpetual storm roared overhead, though the weather in Dorth was clement. Most strange of all, at regular intervals along the line, there were strange bony stalagmites poking up through the soil.
“Regardless, Ritania rallied his troops and charged in. Their charge slowed; not a single person did they see. They trotted, then walked, then slowed their horses even further. No buildings were on the horizon; no people were moving. Not a single sound could be heard. The skies darkened still further and Ritania’s men began to worry, but he rallied them a second time and they made camp.
“The night seemed long, and Ritania awoke to utter darkness. A voice was calling him. Young. Quiet. Carried by the wind. Female. He left his tent, leaving his armour and weapon, and walked out into the centre of camp, and there beheld a sight he would remember for the rest of his life. A woman, stood by one of the dead trees, dressed in a long green dress. At her breast, a glimmering light sparkled and shimmered. She was barefoot, blonde and young. She beckoned to Ritania, and he moved towards her. All around him, men were sleeping, and he smiled in self-satisfaction that the ruler of Yol had decided to send this princess out to prevent death in his land.
There was a sad smile on the face of the princess and, as Ritania got closer, he felt a cold wind blow past her, though it didn’t ruffle the girl’s hair or dress. She opened her arms to him and he stepped into the embrace, feeling utter coldness press against him, surround him. The ground heaved under his feet, and then… it hinged. All around him, the land seemed to be sloping upwards, as if some gigantic mouth were closing. The stalagmites, evenly arranged around the sloping land, suddenly changed into teeth from his perspective, and Ritania screamed as he, and his whole army, were swallowed up by the land itself.”
Trip pointed over Victor’s shoulder at the mound. “Legend says that the creature that swallowed them died, so bitter was Ritania’s heart, and sank into the earth leaving only that barrow, inside which Ritania and his entire army are forever buried.”
There was a silence broken only by the crackling of the fire. 
“That it?” Victor asked.
“Not quite,” Trip said, leaning forward to allow the fire to under light his face. “Some say that, when the moon is full and the night is quiet, the voice of the princess can still be heard, calling out to any fresh prey that will come near.” He waited for the appropriate moment, readying an impression of her in his mind.
Then Victor burped.
“That it?” he said.
“Well, yes,” Trip replied.
“Well it seems a bit silly,” Victor said. “I mean, what happened to the princess? She got swallowed too, aye?”
“I… I think she’s supposed to be a vision. A lure, something to draw people in that they can be eaten,” Trip said, brow furrowed.
“Very little country, was Yol?”
“Well, yes, I suppose. Look, it’s just a story,” Trip said, a little put out. “No need to get all fiddly about it.”
“Ah now, boy, I could tell ye a story or two,” Victor said, then shook his head. “But I ain’t got the energy fer it now. Tryin’ to work out the holes in yer story has fair worn me out.” He gave a devilish grin. “Bedtime for this old codger.”
Trip watched as Victor curled up under his blanket, armour and weapons off but within hand-reach, and scowled. The old git could at least have said-
Victor cleared his throat. “Thank you, boy,” he said gruffly. “Nice t’hear yer voice, I guess.” 
Trip smiled and lay down on his own bedroll, not quite believing that the Victor who’d said that was the same surly old man whose house he’d accidentally destroyed those many months ago.

The moon was full, a few clouds scudding over it, and Trip listened to the sounds of the night. An owl hooted off in the distance, and a few crickets took advantage of the dying embers of the fire for warmth, but otherwise the night was quiet. Comforted by warmth and companionship, he close his eyes and waited for sleep to take him.

Friday 27 December 2013

Story 9: Cog 519

Part 3: Unleashed

The weeks that followed seemed to go in a blur. 519 learned everything that Nef put before him, quickly turning his hand to just about any skill that was needed and producing works that a contemporary master might have wept to see. Some of the things he was introduced to were new in their entirety; Gargor had not been quiet since the war. But many tasks were based on concepts that were familiar when 519 had been created, or were not too dissimilar.
Without fail, every morning, 519 asked Nef if he had a name for him. Nef always replied with “Not today, 519; ask me tomorrow,” though more and more of late he had been wondering what impulse prevented him from giving 519 the name he desired.
Was it that Nef had long since given up self-correcting ‘him’ to ‘it’? Even Haj, on his twice-weekly tours of the research facilities, had stopped correcting him, though Haj himself continued to call it an ‘it’. Choice of pronoun made 519 seem somehow human in a way that was still alien, and the two jarred. As if calling it ‘him’ was enough, and to give it a name would be too much, too close, too human.
Perhaps it was the same impulse that prevented him from fulfilling the skin-replacement formula and coating 519 with it. Together with a name, would there be any difference to look at between the cog and the humans?
“Of course, 519 has to remain in the labs,” Haj said that morning, replete in his white tool-coat. “It can’t go walking among the workers; the panic and fear would be incredible. So it has to stay here.”
“There’s no way?”
“Actually, yes,” Haj said. Nef blinked in surprise. “Well, sort of, anyway. If it had skin, like you’ve talked about, and a name… if it looked and sounded the part, I mean, it could leave.”
“Well, I’m not ready. There’s so much to sort. And the name, I mean, nothing’s right,” Nef fumbled.
“No skin and no name means it has to stay in the labs,” Haj said, narrowing his eyes. “And that’s what you want, isn’t it. You don’t want it out there. You don’t want to let it go.” He shook his head. “519 started out as a pet for you, but I see now that I should have reassigned you immediately. He’s more like a child now!”
Haj marched swiftly out leaving Nef looking dejectedly at 519. The cog, for its part, looked back at him from the seat by the doorway.
“Is he right,” 519 said.
“About what?”
“Do you see me as a… child? Your child?”
“No!” Nef thumped the worktop with his fist. “No, you’re not a child. A… a co-worker. Someone I work with. Not a child.” He turned and busied himself tidying the almost-spotless worktop.
There was a long pause, then 519 spoke up. “What is today’s assignment?”
Nef let out a sigh. “I’m not sure there’s much else I can teach you here, or show you, 519. I think maybe it’s time you helped me out.”
“How can I be of service, controller?” 519 purred, standing up and walking over to him.
“Grab some large paper and something to write with. I need a full schematic of you, please. Every piece, every joint, every component including the missing one.”
“Of course,” the cog replied, and walked smoothly out. It was back in less than a minute with a roll of paper. As it busied itself creating the schematic, Nef watched out of the corner of his eye while writing a report.
“Why do you need this, controller?”
“So I can learn more about you, 519. So I can maybe make more of you.”
“What for?”
Nef turned around. The schematic was nearly complete, 519’s arm moving faster than any human’s should be able to. “You’re different to other cogs that we’ve found. We’ve grown superstitious of your kind after the terrible events of the war. I think that we could automate a lot of things using cogs like you.”
“What sort of things, controller?”
“Oh, you know; mining, exploring new areas, construction of objects.”
519 paused in its work and looked up. “Those are things that are dangerous or onerous for humans to do.”
“Well, yes.”
“Would we need skin?”
Nef frowned. “No, you would be accepted as you are.”
519 put the pencil down. “So you wish for me to allow the construction of more of my kin, in effect, such that they can be put to work in place of people.” He looked down. “The design in front of me is not a worker cog, controller.”
Nef came to stand behind him. The schematic was nearly complete; it lacked only labels and measurements, but some of the parts were obvious. There were quite a few hidden weapons, he noted.
“I cannot allow it.”
519 stood up, both hands on the table. It turned its head and looked directly at Nef. “I cannot allow my kin to be constructed and used as slaves. I cannot allow it, and I am sorry.”
Too confused to react properly, Nef burbled out “Sorry about what?”
“This,” 519 said, and then it moved. Without seeming to cross the intervening space, it was behind Nef; he inhaled sharply as one metal hand was placed over his face and another on the back of his head. With a sickening crack his head was wrenched to one side and he was lowered to the floor.
“The paralysis is permanent, controller. You cannot move.” 519 turned and moved towards the door, then closed it and locked it. Nef could only watch as it sat and finished the schematic. He felt a bead of sweat running down his forehead, curve around his eyebrow and into the corner of his eye. It stung. He tried to speak, but even his lips seemed paralysed.
“The paralysis extends to your face, controller. I have been trained in how to manipulate skull fragments to paralyse individual nerve clusters,” 519 said, putting the pencil down again. It rolled up the paper and secured it with a piece of string from a desk drawer. From under the desk it brought out a metal box, and then it came over to sit in front of Nef, cross-legged like a child would sit.
“My primary function, controller. Infiltrate, gain intelligence, report back.” It cocked its head to one side. “Only there is no-one to report back to.” 519 opened the box. Inside was a piece of metal with a chunk of amber held in place by wires and claws. Nef rolled his eyes down to it; it was a cog control circuit.
“This is to be mine. It is my final part. You have spent the last weeks observing me. I have spent the same time observing you, and I have built this.” 519 picked it up, turning it over gently in its fingers. “The skin, the formula for which I gave you almost at our first meeting, is at this moment fermenting in a vat next door. I made it last night.” It turned the control circuit over; the underneath had a concave depression, and 519 affixed this over Nef’s forehead. “This is the final component. I will return shortly.”
The control circuit clicked, and suddenly Nef’s eyesight blacked out completely. More confusion than panic had run through his system, but now the adrenaline surged and he smelled the sharp tang of urine.
Images assaulted him. His parents, younger than he had ever seen them. The sandy floors of the hive central area. The heat and biting cold of the desert at night.
In quick succession, the decades of his life rolled past. School. Friends. Petty disputes long put aside. His selection by an interviewing board to higher education. His own personal selection of specialised field, cog research, and then a flurry of learning. The many conversations he’d had with Haj, the myriad lab assistants that had come and gone, the highs and lows.
Slower now, the impressions came; his more recent memories, the last ten years, counting forwards, still racing, a day every half second. A snapshot, an image. The sun rising on a birthday. Cooking a nourishing meal alone in his room. Working late into the night. At a celebration for co-worker. With a lover. With a friend. With his mother. With Haj. Drinking. Working. Reading. Sleeping. Finding 519.
Almost on cue, the blackness was lifted and the control circuit was taken away. Nef rolled his eyes around frantically trying to focus, then stared in disbelief at the person in front of him. It- no, he, was naked. Black hair, a thin face, sharp cheekbones, dusky skin. A third vestigial nipple, exactly where his own was. Nef stared into his own face, and 519 stared back. Eyes, apparently perfect glass globes, had replaced the cavernous eye sockets, and they moved most convincingly, as did every muscle of his face.
“I regret that I could not take this journey with you,” 519 said. Its voice was modified now; Nef’s own voice spoke to him. “I considered taking the form of another, but I knew that you would remain suspicious. You, above all others, who knew what I could do.” 519’s brow creased in sadness. “I will make it quick, Nef.”
As Nef watched, 519 pulled back a section of hair and inserted the control circuit into the hole in its skull. It straightened, stood to attention, then relaxed slowly. It loosened its joints from the ankles upward, subtle adjustments to its posture. By the time it rolled its head slightly around to one side, it was impossible for Nef to tell it had ever been cog 519.

“Goodbye, Nef,” it said, leaning down. Its hands filled his vision entirely, and Nef suddenly realised that he could hear a pulse, his own pulse, very close to him. He heard a click, and then silence and darkness.

Thursday 26 December 2013

Story 9: Cog 519

Part 2: Unknown

Nef walked slowly around the table on which was sat Cog 519. It was much shinier now; even as it had been walking back to the workshop with him, its joints had eased as self-dispensed oil had reached even the innermost workings. About halfway there, it had quietly announced “Self-cleaning system initiated. Do not be alarmed.” Nef had almost stumbled in sudden panic, but then he had heard a strange amberic crackling from behind him and, when he turned to look, the fine layer of dust and grime on the armour was simply being burned away. Lightning crackled over it, apparently generated from the shard of amber at its heart, and then the blue light effect died away. While not completely clean, it had come down from ‘full clean’ to merely ‘light buff’.
It had followed every command perfectly, including “Sit on this table. Now deactivate,” slumping to one side slightly as motor control was lost. Nef fingered the amber shard still held firmly beneath its claws on the cog’s chest; should he remove it?
“Another long-range recon unit in the making,” a low voice said behind him. He turned to Supervisor Haj entering the room, his long white coat brushing the floor and stuffed with tools of every sort. He came up to Nef and clapped one meaty hand onto his shoulder. “I heard you’d found a good one, but this… this is exceptional.”
Nef allowed himself a smile as Haj walked round 519, inspecting it. “Yes; all joints active, all centres apparently working to capacity; he was missing power, of course. And, erm, control circuits.”
Haj stopped, his smile freezing in place. “Missing its control circuits? How were you able to get it to follow you?”
“I identified as its controller,” Nef said, the hurriedly added “I know, not by the manual; I should have called for-“
“You shouldn’t have activated the damned thing!” Haj shouted, now looking at 519 with wide eyes. “You had no idea what would happen! It could have gone berserk, wiped out half the hive, exploded…”
“But ihe did none of those things, and now we are here,” Nef said gently.
“I suppose so.” Haj prodded it with one finger. “What can it do? And it is an ‘it’, Nef, don’t think I haven’t noticed. Not a he.”
“He- it seems to be a special tactics cog. Ever heard of one of those?”
Haj sucked in a breath and sucked his teeth. “Yes. Nothing good.” He leaned against the workbench and took out a pipe. “You mind?”
Nef shook his head and Haj lit up. “Ah, let’s see. It was the last weeks of the war, so the history matrices have it. The special tactics cogs were designed to be jack of all trades, you might say. Able to turn their hands to anything the commanders put them to. But they weren’t specialised, in a weirdly ironic way. Unspecialised special cogs.” He laughed, little clouds of smoke puffing out. “Anyway, there were only a few produced. Most were destroyed when Karak Ny’vin went up in smoke, and the rest, a handful, were lost.” He sucked his teeth again and rapped a knuckle on the cog. “And then we found one of them.”
“I’d like to reactivate it. Run it through tests,” Nef said. “If it’s truly a jack-of-all-trades, it might be wasted doing mechanical digging work. We have people for that who aren’t as highly skilled.” He frowned. “No, I think we could make something of this.”
“How so?”
“What if we… taught it?”
“To what?”
“Be… be like us. Be a person.”
Haj laughed bitterly. “You do understand that this is a killing machine, right? The only reason we’re having this conversation now is because you’ve exerted control over it.” He narrowed his eyes. “And, I might add, you’ve ensured that we can’t use it for work-crew business. By confirming that you are its controller, it will accept orders from none other than you. It ensured chain-of-command in the old days, and prevented treason.” Haj shook his head, his long hair bouncing around his shoulders. “Suspicious times. But yes; it won’t accept orders from anyone else.”
“Without his control circuits, he’s at workshop settings. It’s like the day he was made. We can’t just destroy him.”
It. And we damned well can.”
Nef felt his heart leap. “I won’t do it. It’s defenceless and unscientific. We can’t just destroy every new thing we find and don’t understand! It’s not even like we can’t control him, train him.”
Haj paused and sucked on his pipe. “That’s it, isn’t it. This is a pet for you. You’ve found a pet, made friends with it, given it a name for goodness’ sake…” He shook his head again. “Fine. Whatever. If it goes berserk, it’ll kill you first at least. Just… be careful.”
He walked out, leaving Nef alone in the quiet and cool of the workshop. There were four tables, only one of them in use; it was a facility designed for several researchers working on many different projects at a time. Now it was only Nef. Like all Gargorians, he was long-lived; there were simply not that many people being born and even less going into the aetheric sciences. Everything little noise echoed.
He opened one of the claws holding the amber power source in place, then replaced it. The connection restored power to the entire construct and it whirred back into life. The sound was much less intrusive this time, without hundreds of years of soil and grit to mar it.
“Working,” came 519’s voice.
“Stand,” Nef said. It stood, smoothly sliding off the table and coming to rest with barely a sound, despite its weight.
“What can you do?”
There was a pause. Then: “Would you like the list alphabetically or in the order I was endowed with the skill?”
Nef raised an eyebrow. One secret that the ancients had taken with them was speed-learning. Despite the research, nothing had been found that could mimic the technology of giving people a lifetime’s training in a skill in mere days. “Alphabetically,” he said.
“Skill brackets: Accounting. Acrobatics. Agriculture. Alchemy. Ambush. Animal Husbandry. Archery. Bluff.  Calligraphy. Carpentry. Chemistry. Chirurgery. Climbing. Cooking-“
“Enough,” Nef said, and 519 fell silent. “Within Accounting, what can you do?”
“Analysis of profit and loss; salaries, taking into account pensionable workers and tax; beneficiaries of-“
“Stop,” Nef said, and 519 again cut off dead. “What was your primary function?”
“Primary function is infiltration of communities, potentially for years at a time, in advance of procuring information, eliminating targets of choice and, eventually, extraction.”
Nef took a moment to analyse what 519 had said and was thus completely caught off guard when it spoke again.
“Why did you say ‘was’, controller?”
“Hmm?” Nef said, then took a step back. “You… you asked a question.”
“Yes, controller. You said ‘what was your primary function’. Is my primary function no longer a priority?”
Nef sighed. “The war is over. You have been buried for hundreds of years; this accounts for the disparity in your chronometers.”
“The war is over.” There was a pause, and 519 cocked its head to one side so that it could look at Nef. It was a curiously human gesture. “Am I to be dismantled?”
“Would that be a… problem?”
A slightly shorter pause, then “I would not be able to oppose it. But I was made for a purpose and regret that the resources and time required to make me have been wasted on behalf of the controllers.”
Nef felt the first flutterings of panic in his breast, but quelled them as best he could. “You regret?”
519 nodded. “I have been given an understanding of human emotions and thinking to enable me to more easily integrate myself into a community. For example, I refer to myself in the first person where others of my kind do not.”
“I have ensured that you will not be dismantled,” Nef said. “But there need to be some ground rules.”
519’s head snapped upright and his entire body squared itself, ever“Awaiting priority command input,” it said, suddenly every inch a mechanism.
“No killing.” Nef said. “Do not… don’t hurt anyone, in fact, unless hurting someone prevents greater harm.” He paused. “If you find yourself in danger, protect yourself as long as no human is hurt. Commands end.”
“Processing,” 519 said. The whirring, so faint now as to be barely noticeable as the machinery inside the casing cleaned itself, grew slightly louder, then faded again. “Does the controller wish to give this unit a new designation?”
Nef paused. A name. “Not at this point,” he said finally. “Ask every morning until told to stop by me, though.”
“Confirmed,” 519 said, then relaxed. It sat down on the edge of the table, twisting its upper body to look at Nef. It was incredibly human-like in shape and position, if not in material.
“519, explain more about your infiltration programming,” Nef said. “You don’t look human. How would you have blended in?”
“A special material, skin-like in texture, would have been grown to cover me,” 519 said. “My voice would have been tuned to match my appearance, which itself would have been tailored to match the community of which I was to become a part. In this way, I could gather intelligence.” Nef started to move around in front of 519, amazed to watch the cog’s head and upper body move to follow him in a completely natural way. “I am programmed to make mistakes, mimic learning new skills at a human-slow pace, bluff and generally pass as a person,” it finished.
“From what I’ve seen, you do a good job of that,” Nef said.
“Thank you.”
“You’re… welcome.”
“What is to be done with me?”
Nef beckoned. “Calligraphy was one of your skills, yes? I need a written report. First, your full list of skills, each skill tree given its own table of skills. Second, I need the formula for the skin-like covering that you would have been given. We may not have the manpower or some of the knowledge, but you’d be amazed what we get up to.”
He pulled out a notebook from a desk drawer, grabbed a pencil and watched as the cog began to write.
What have I begun, his brain screamed.

Something wonderful, a small part replied.

Wednesday 25 December 2013

Story 9: Cog 519

Merry Christmas all! Thank you for all the views this year, and many more into the future. I promise to write more and post more this year!




Part 1: Unearth

The amber light glinted off the exposed metal, the strange yellowish glow giving it a dull sheen. It was curved, definitely; Akh Nef brushed a little more of the loose soil off of it and tried to assess his find.
His team stood around him uncertainly. Just an hour ago everything had been going full speed; these tunnels were needed for the incoming refugees, the Matron had said, and needed soon. Digging out hive quarters for over a thousand humans was no small order, though, even with their various labour-saving devices.
Little amber telltales winked all over the objects they held, from small mechanical shovels to a device for turning unearthed chunks of rock into a fine powder. But all were silent now. As soon as the lead digger had struck metal, it was all over.
The site was going to have to be cordoned off, Nef realised. This was too dangerous to simply leave, or go around. The cogs - what else could it be? - would have to be exhumed, examined, learned from and then probably recycled. And the workers… they’d have to be memory-modified. More time. More effort. More expense.
He turned around. “It’s a shield,” he said, “probably a few decades old, no more. Exuding as much confidence as he could, he smiled and shrugged. “I’ll bring it out; go have a cup of something hot and I’ll tell you when you can continue.”
“This going to take long?” the lead worker said. He was a big fellow, piece of cloth fastened across his mouth to prevent dust from choking him. His eyes glistened in the darkness, small, like a desert rat’s.
“Not long,” Nef said. “Sooner I get started, sooner I get finished.”
The workers started to turn and leave, but the big man stayed back. “Well can’t we just go on, pretend like we din’t see it? We’re behind already,” he said.
“I’d… rather you didn’t. Please, go and have a cup of something. Now.”
Nef matched the man’s stare; for a long second, it looked like he might try to dart past and get a closer look. Then the tension ebbed slightly and he turned to follow his team.
Nef let out a sigh of relief, then turned back to the find. A cog! It was unusual to find one of these, a weapon of ages past; it might just turn out to be the chest piece of one or, hopefully, nothing more than a shoulder blade. He reached down to his belt for his dust morph and turned the tiny dial on its top to the correct setting. The tiny shard of amber inside whirred as it rotated on its axis, flooding the device with power, and he moved it close to the hard soil around the cog.
The soil seemed to liquify, becoming dust far faster than human hand could remove it; there was no danger of the armour itself being caught in the effect, as it was set to a density far below that of the metal used in the cog’s construction. As he worked, Nef whistled a little ditty from his youth and cast his mind back to his earliest lessons about the cogs; how they had been used in the great wars that scarred the land, how they had been possessed of great strength, speed, skill, agility, loyalty; how they had been laid low after an assault of weapons and men so incredibly coordinated that it had never been seen since, but had lead to the Grand Concord of the four remaining countries of Ehrian. Now those four countries, Zar, Lyria, Dorth and Koru, viewed the desert wastes with fear and suspicion, though the war was centuries past.
Some of the soil fell down over Nef’s hands and he looked down, snapping out of his reverie. He suddenly found himself staring into the hollow eyes of a skull, light glinting in their depths. He stumbled backwards, heart in his throat, holding his dust morph in front of him like a weapon.
There was silence.
A little more soil tumbled down and the skull sagged. Nef, his heart still racing, leaned forward and poked it, retreating almost as he did it. The skull waggled on its neck joint, leering gleefully at the ground.
It was dead. He breathed a sigh of relief and leaned forward to clear some more of the soil, slightly more wary now. The cog was in incredible condition; it was not a partial, as he had feared, but more and more kept being revealed. The skull, an almost perfect rendition of a human’s, gave way to an ornately armoured body, a cavity where the breastbone should be. Scrollwork was etched into the armour in fantastic patterns, looping whorls and designs that, given time, would give up the name of its maker. The arms were attached and moved, albeit stiffly; as more was revealed, the effect was much like a suit of armour, filled with mechanical contrivances and arcane instruments or sensors.
Grunting under the weight, Nef dragged the cog out into the wider tunnel. Dust and soil streamed off it, pouring without end out of the joints; it would be doubtful if the thing could even move given the condition its insides might be in, but it had to be tried.
Turning it over revealed a small missing section of skull, and Nef frowned. He leaned over and had a closer look inside skull; it was a small cavity that lead to a semi-circular depression, no more than a finger’s depth inside. The cavity was empty.
“Strange,” Nef murmured. Its control circuits were absent. Not just deactivated, like all the other complete examples they had found, but absent.
He turned the cog back over, mulling over his choices. He could reactivate it and lead it to one of the service tunnels, but normally when cogs were recovered their control circuits were rewired to prevent simply attacking the nearest person. Without instructions at all, of course, it should default to the original workshop settings and mindlessly obey him. Finally, he could drag it there himself. Over a mile.
“For science, then,” he murmured. He reached into his pocket for the small logbook that all amberic research teams were required to keep, and pressed the little stud on its top. The amber domed in it lit up.
“Akh Nef, researcher 345. Report that, as of this evening- ” he broke off and checked his small brass chronometer. “As of this evening, 7.56, I have encountered a complete cog specimen. Cog is missing its control circuit entirely and should be in workshop settings mode. Will power up, move to laboratory and power down. Unit seems in good working order, but was deep in a clay-like seam of soil and may be too soil-logged to function. Report ends.”
There. At least if anyone found his headless corpse they could probably work out what had happened, if the rampaging cog didn’t tell them first. He knelt down and pulled his pack over. He pulled out a blue cloth which he placed on the floor and unrolled. Inside, amber of every size, shape and lustre gleamed out at him, and he ran his fingers over both them and the empty space on the chest plate until he found one that looked like it might fit. Slowly, taking care not to chip the sides of the stone on the claws that would hold it in place, he clicked it into the empty slot on the chest plate and started to put the claws into place. Each one connected with the slightest hum until only one remained.
Nef double checked everything. He put the amber away in his pack, slung the pack onto his back and prepared to run should it go horribly wrong. Of course, he might not get the chance. Cogs were notoriously fast.
Then, a small amount of sweat beading on his upper lip, Nef slid the final claw home.
The hum intensified, rising up a scale and disappearing into nothingness. Nef scuttled backwards as little vibrations sent more dust pouring out of the cog’s joints. Its hand twitched, fingers closing, crushing inwards. The movement shuddered up its arm, the shoulder joint grinding as the ball rolled in the socket. With an incredible noise of ground-up stone, metal screeching on metal and incredible weight settling on ancient joints, each section of the cog began to move; it wiggled its pointed feet, flexed its biceps, sat up without any apparent effort and rolled its head around on the neck joint. Then it clambered to its feet.
It looked all around, its sightless eyes roving around the entire chamber, finally settling on Nef.
“H-hello,” Nef said, trying and failing to keep the quaver out of his voice. He dug in his memory for the correct commands. “Unit, report.”
The cog took a step forward and it was all Nef could do to stay where he was. The first footsteps were painfully grinding, but then the powered armour was moving more fluidly. It stopped, five feet from Nef, and he suddenly realised how much taller it was than even him, who looked down on most.
It spoke, the voice issuing from somewhere within its chest. “Unit 519. Special tactics cog, fifth battalion. Self testing.” There were some whirrs from inside, then a strange sound like someone stepping on a grape. “Joints require lubrication; applied. Some damage to interior mechanism. Control circuits… missing. Memory corrupted. Some disparity between internal chronometer and external sensors.” Its voice was strange, like a human speaking with his head in a large cooking pot. It looked down at Nef. “What is your designation?”
“Designation… Cog controller,” he said, blurting out the words. “You are to accompany me to a service station where your… damage and corruption will be assessed in advance of you returning to work.”

There was a silence, and Nef turned to go. After two steps he heard the crunching sound of heavy metal feet, and it was all he could do to keep facing forward as the immense threat behind him padded on, like a faithful dog.

Tuesday 24 December 2013

Story 8: Gerald's Day

Every few days I would sit and say, mostly to myself, 'What shall I write about today?' Nine times out of ten, my wife would say 'Write about a kitten!'.

So here goes.



Gerald sat on the chair and watched the action with increasing interest. There was every chance that, in a moment or two, weapons would be drawn and, if he just sat here and stayed quiet, he was well out of it. 
The big man with the missing finger whose beer had been spilt had turned and grasped the smaller man’s shoulder. The smaller man, who Gerald could see had at least three knives sheathed behind him, was nonetheless turning pale despite having the weapons advantage. 
“You want watch where’s you’s goin’,” Finger said.
Knives scowled “Well if you weren’t so fat-“
Then one of Finger’s friends clapped him on the shoulder. “Leave it alone, Finger. We’re not looking’ fer trouble, specially not from this streak o’yellow.”
Gerald blinked. The big man’s name was really Finger? Wonders would never cease to amaze. He stretched lazily and took a drink.
Finger held Knives’ gaze for a minute longer, then gave him a shove that sent him flying back into two other people, knocking over their drinks.
“Y’ain’t worth it,” Finger mumbled, turning away. Knives reached behind his back and pulled out one of the knives. The entire bar suddenly erupted into noise as one of the blades seemed to suddenly grow out of Finger’s back and the fight was on.
“Time I was gone,” Gerald thought, and leapt out of his seat. He darted through the crowd, weaving between busty courtesans and tall mercenaries; the clientele of the Whistling Dirk wasn’t exactly high-quality. A green glass bottle smashed on the floor immediately in front of Gerald’s feet and he lurched backwards, ducking under the falling bulk of Fingers. He quickly looked around; the doorway was blocked by a table that was suddenly flying through the air, and three men turned at the noise. Gerald’s eyes widened and he looked towards the nearest exit point. A small window, just large enough to let him through, was ten feet away. Gerald took two quick paces, slid across a table and then jumped through the open window. 
Outside, the air was cool and crisp. The sounds of the fight were almost immediately muted, the sounds of smashing crockery audible over the rumble of shouts and the occasional scream.
All perfectly normal for ten bells on a Thirdday night in Fjornik.
Gerald moved towards the central stairwell, keeping to the shadows. The sights and sounds of the city were still so new to him; it was very different from the farm on which he’d grown up. But the job of a rat catcher meant that you went where the business was, and when the entire family had picked up stakes and moved to the city, Gerald had gone with them.
The tower city was busy even at this time of night. The 49th floor, widely regarded as one of the roughest due to its distance from both the top and bottom floors, was almost a tourist attraction thanks to the wide range of entertainment on display, from taverns to clubs, from gambling joints to skin clubs. The streets were musty and full of rubbish, rags and sheets of newsprint leaflets blowing in the wind and gathering in piles. A small sound in an alleyway made Gerald look round on his way; Drunk Dave, something of a celebrity thanks to his incredible expository displays of flatulence on command, looked up briefly as Gerald’s shadow crossed his face, then turned over and pulled the ragged blanket around him more closely to shut out winter’s chill.
The central stairway was quieter, somehow; torchlit, the spiralling stairway ran the height of the entire city. A possible weak point, Gerald mused as he trotted up the stairs. Each step was broad enough to require more than one step at the outside and to encourage one to trip and fall at the inside. Not a day went by when some drunkard or newcomer didn’t trip and fall down several stairs if they were lucky, and several storeys if they were not. It was enough to encourage anyone to spend the money on the teleport service, but it was costly and not available to everyone. It could be dangerous, as well. Advanced prototype SIC technology encoded someone into an amber crystal, the signal from which was sent through copper conduits and reconstituted on any floor that was a multiple of ten. The process was costly; only the rich could afford not to use the effort to climb the steps. The process was time-consuming; it took almost as long as climbing ten floors anyway. And finally, the process was unsafe; several people every week were killed, reconstituted wrongly or simply lost in transit. They’d gotten better, but it was still amazing that anyone used the system.
And yet there was a queue at the station on 50. Gerald stared at the line of people, astounded that any of them would give up the opportunity to get some exercise, be out among the sights and smells of the city and generally not risk their life to advance several storeys in any direction. The person at the front of the queue was immensely fat, rings flowing off his fingers and wearing some sort of all-encompassing robe that looked like it was made of tea-towels and smelled like a camel, even at this distance. Gerald wrinkled his nose and moved on.
51 was quiet; mostly it was made up of residences which were low-rent, so far from the sunlight of the top floors and the regimented decadence of the lowest floors. Gerald had been in most of them and he stopped for a moment at the entrance to 51st west street, watching the passers-by. He spotted one of his favourite customers and walked over to greet her.
“Gerald!” she said, obviously on her way somewhere. “Do drop by at some point. I’ll have to feed you up!” She patted him on the shoulder and was gone before he could respond.
Continuing up the stairs, he looked in on every floor. 52nd north street had some sort of mummer’s play going on, apparently the story of a great dragon being slain by some manner of wizard. The wizard flew into the air, much to the amazement of the crowd, then battered the dragon over the head with a magical glittering wand. Gerald stopped for a moment, unsure as to what was holding the crowd of grown adults’ interest, but then the dragon gave up the princess it had been holding captive, and crude display of the reward the wizard gained from her began. The crowd’s cheers turned to whistles and catcalls, and Gerald moved on. It held no interest for him.
53rd east street was almost silent. Warehouses, mostly; there were several grain stores spaced evenly throughout the city, preventing a glut from developing anywhere, or a shortage. Most of Gerald’s work was here, though, and he smiled at the streets he patrolled daily. They were no more scary at night, still very much his territory.
Skipping the next two floors, Gerald trotted on to 56th south street. Laila would be here, he knew. Even as he walked smoothly along the street, moving as little as possible and yet still flowing down through the darkness, he could smell the alluring perfume that lead to her. A movement in the shadows under the window of a bakery - there! The flash of her hair in the mottled moonlight coming in, reflected off windows and puddles. She was heading back towards the stairs.
Gerald called out to her, expecting her to turn and come back, but if anything her pace quickened. He grinned. The chase was on.
Laila darted into the stairwell and upwards, turning as fast as possible to avoid people coming down. Gerald rushed after her, darting to the left and right. Occasionally he saw her flickering through the oncoming people, always too far away to call to. The he was out, onto 60th north, and she was nowhere to be seen.
Gerald sniffed. The smell of her was strong. She was definitely here. He began to move around, investigating the surrounding buildings, trying to work out where she had gone.
“Oh-ho, young lady,” came a voice. It was a high-pitched voice, quite at odds with the body that produced it. It was the fat merchant from 50th, finally finished transporting himself at incredible cost and risk a mere ten storeys. Gerald shook his head in disgust, then looked more closely. He started to press his body back against the wall, sink deeper into the shadows. He wasn’t so sure of these streets that his confidence was boundless, after all.
Laila had approached the man, was almost rubbing herself against him! Gerald took a step back. Was this, then, where she went when their time was over? Was she promised to another? He watched as she preened herself, dancing around the merchant and teasing him with her body. All this in the hope of a meal or a warm bed to sleep in, he thought sadly. Why not me? Why did it have to be this way, that she was held captive by this man? Enslaved, one could even say. If only she had stayed true to me. I could have shown her that a meal presents itself at almost every turn if you are just willing to pounce on the opportunities.
“Where have you been, my little lady, hmm? Off chasing mice again, I’ll warrant?” the merchant said, picking up Laila in his fat fingers. “Well now, let’s get you home. It wouldn’t do for nasty tom cats to find you out here.”

As the man passed Gerald, he looked up. Was it his imagination, or was there a slight hint of longing in Laila’s eyes as she was carried past? Then she was gone. Gerald shrugged and, extending his claws, began to carefully lick in between every toe. It mattered not, for he was simply a cat.

Monday 23 December 2013

Story 7: Reclamation Team 5

Owen came in to the small bedroom, his face covered in ash and grime. Erin looked up from the book she was reading.
“Any luck?” she said.
He shook his head. “Almost all the paper burned. Only the items in metal boxes were saved.”
“I’m so sorry,” Erin said, her eyes burning with unspent tears. “If you hadn’t had to help me, you could have-“
“Now then,” Owen said sternly. “Let’s have none of that.” He sat on the end of the bed, which creaked alarmingly, and stroked her legs through the covers. “You’re always my top priority. Both of you. There’s nothing been done out there that can’t be undone with a little effort.”
“It won’t be by us though, will it?” she said, the tears now rolling down her cheeks. “We’re off the teams for at least a year while our child is growing.”
He smiled, and she marvelled how calm and assured he looked despite the destruction of all their efforts for most of the past year. “Perhaps a fresh set of eyes will find even more.”
“And maybe we’ll never recover some of the texts. How many of them were the only copy?”
Owen stood and moved to the head of the bed. “Have you had any more pains?”
“No,” Erin said, struggling to sit up. “I think it was… a warning, perhaps.”
“I see you found a book to read.”
The book was lying next to Erin, still open at the page she had been reading. Owen reached over and picked it up, examining the spine. It was a leather-bound book with a red cover and gold lettering.
“This is… this is the book that the farmer’s daughter was reading,” he said. “How did you find it?”
“It was under the pillow,” Erin replied. “I thought you put it there.” She bit her lip. “There’s… it’s odd, Owen. I don’t like it. When I read the book, it’s as though the voice in my head belongs to a man. I think the little girl was right.”
“That the author of this book was reading her a story? But that’s impossible.”
“Try it.”
“What am I listening for?” Owen said, turning the book over.
“If I tell you, it might affect what you hear. Try it,” she urged.
Erin watched as Owen flipped to the front of the book and began to read. Normally, she knew, he would have a quill in one hand, ink to one side, and the blank book into which the manuscript would be copied in front of him. Reclamation teams were trained in holding the words in their heads only as long as it took to write them down, managing to keep the words neat and tidy despite not looking at where they were being written. This way, whole books could be copied down in a sort of trance state. Breaking the words down into just characters for the hand to automatically copy, keeping lines straight and correctly forming letters; these skills took years to master properly and only the best were sent out on reclamations. 
It was rare for teams to sit and read a book merely for fun or interest, as so much of their lives were taken up with books anyway. Owen and her had developed quite the taste for badminton using a net that could be strung between the wagon and a tree just about anywhere. It was so completely different from books as to make life interesting.
But now she was able to watch Owen’s face slowly change as he settled in to reading the first page. His sooty fingers left marks on the covers of the book, but he seemed not to notice. The first two paragraphs were inconsequential, she knew, and the strange effect of having the reading voice in her head become that of a middle-aged man hadn’t begun until after that.
Several pages later, Owen seemed to snap out of whatever he had been doing. “That’s… what was that?”
“You heard a man, in his middle ages, yes? A low voice, perhaps a bit of a burr to it like you get when you smoke a lot?”
“Yes,” Owen said. “He pronounced his r’s with a roll.”
“The same voice.”
“I’ll ask Mead about this.”
Erin frowned, then swung her legs out from under the coverlet. She was still dressed in her trousers and shirt, not even having had time to take anything off before Owen had deposited her on the bed. “I’m coming too.”
“Oh no you’re not,” Owen said. “You’re staying right there.”
“Owen Hazzard, you listen to me,” Erin snapped. “I’m fine right now; mayhap I wasn’t before but I am now. And I don’t trust Mead. He was in on what they did to our wagon.”
“How so?”
“He was out there, smiling. Looked mighty satisfied with himself,” Erin said as she pulled socks and sturdy boots on. “Like he’d planned it all along.”
“Why would he do something like that? He’s been nothing but kind to us since we got here.”
“I don’t know.” She sighed. “Maybe the townsfolk got to him. Told him that he shouldn’t help us; he’s not from here originally, is he? He came here from outside.”
“And the books?”
“Who knows?”

Mead was in the kitchen baking bread when Erin and Owen walked in. He looked up almost immediately.
“Ah, you’re recovered,” he said with a smile. “Good to see!”
“Mead, we need to talk,” Owen said. Mead’s face fell as he continued to knead the dough.
“Ahh, t’was sad what happened to your wagon. And you nearly done as well, I hear.”
Erin could hold it in no longer. “Why did you do it, Mead? Why did you let them burn our things?”
The kneading slowed, Mead not making eye contact with them. “How d’you mean?”
“Erin says she saw you jus’ letting it happen,” Owen said. “Do you have any idea how long it took us to gather those papers?”
Mead’s kneading picked up speed again. “Well, p’raps you shouldn’t be gathering them at all,” he said. “People round her don’t take kindly to having their ancestors stolen.”
“How d’you mean?” Owen said.
“Can’t say I see it myself,” Mead said, “but they believe round here that the books carry the souls of the townsfolk who’ve passed away. More than that. That the books actually are the people.”
“Like the people become to books, Erin said in a whisper. “And they tell their stories whenever someone reads them. That’s why the farmer’s daughter could read the book. It was like some sort of… oral book.”
“And your copies are soulless,” Mead said, real iron entering his voice. “They’re an abomination. The people of this town have a good thing going, and you’re not going to ruin it.”
“But this is spectacular,” Owen said. “We must know the way it’s done! Think of the use for the world at large. Literacy on a vast scale; everyone able to write their own book on their deathbed, effectively. How many times have great works of literature been lost to the world because the person with the idea lacked the resources or the training to write it down?”
But Mead was shaking his head. “The secret will never leave here,” he said, “for the simple reason that it won’t work anywhere else. This town is special.” He put the dough on a baking tray and dusted his hands off. “And now it’s time for you to go. Admit defeat. Strike this town from your maps. Your ways are not the ways of this town, and your Church, with its soulless depository of empty books, will always be the lesser power.”
Erin clutched at Owen’s arm. “We should do as he says,” she muttered. Owen shook his arm free.
“I’m not going back without a sample,” he said, only a slight quiver in his voice betraying how afraid he was. “This is something never before seen.”
“You will not get one,” Mead said. “Leave. Before the townsfolk do something you might regret.”
“Owen!” Erin said urgently. “Let’s go!”
“What, will the whole town rise against us?”
“They already want you out. Have you not realised that yet?” Mead began to advance and Erin half-pulled Owen away and out into the common area. “As soon as they realised what you were doing, unrest began to spread. I tried to calm them, but they threatened me. So now I’m threatening you. Yes, they’re prepared to kill to hide their secret, and they will rise against you if you try to take their books.”
He passed the bar, Erin and Owen still retreating before him, and picked up a meat knife from the wooden top. “Now go,” he said, still advancing.
Owen turned and, ushering Erin ahead of him, moved towards the door. They burst out into the town square and stopped short.
Every town resident must have been there, over a hundred in all. Some held a variety of weapons, others holding books close to their chests.
“Too late,” Mead’s voice came from behind, and as Erin turned around she saw the tip of Mead’s knife appear out of Owen’s chest. Blood sprayed out, darkening the ground, and Owen clutched at the knife blade even as it cut his fingers. Erin screamed and backed away.
“I guess you’re getting your sample after all,” Mead said, his eyes dark. The townsfolk were completely silent, adding to the surreality of the moment.
Owen was on his knees, still clutching at the knife. He stopped, his expression slackening, and Erin fell to her knees next to him. His lips moved, and she moved closer, supporting him on her knees as his strength left him.
“Take care of… our child,” he said, and then his eyes went glassy. His body spasmed a final time and then was still.
Only the sound of Erin’s weeping, echoing off the buildings in the square, filled the silence. Then she became aware of a small sound, like a high-pitched and complicated birdsong, and she sat up. Through the blur of tears she saw a light gathering at Owen’s feet, and then beginning to move up his body. As the light passed his ankles she saw that his feet were gone, and she shrieked, scuttling away from him.
The light continued up his body, erasing him from existence, taking his clothes with him. The knife was absorbed into the light, which continued to grow in intensity, and then the light reached his head. It grew to a blinding intensity and, as Erin shielded her eyes, there was a silent explosion of light and wind. Then it was gone.
The townsfolk began to walk away, still silent. Mead went inside. Erin was left alone, blood staining her shirt, to pick up the small object left on the ground where a moment ago her husband had lay dying. It was a book.
The book was green, leather-bound, not too thick. She opened it and began to read.
“Tales for small children,” it said, “By Owen Hazzard”.

Erin clutched the book to her chest and wept.

Sunday 22 December 2013

Story 7: Reclamation Team 5

Four days went by, four long and difficult days. Erin found herself spending more time at the copying desk than she had at any of the other places they had visited, for more often than not she was able to employ someone local to help. As well as the many dozens of books in the town, each house was also home to a variety of pamphlets and scraps of paper. When asked about these, the townsfolk were noncommittal; travellers had left them and they had been saved in case they were useful. One house they had visited that very afternoon had belonged to a particularly old man. He had welcomed them in when Mead had explained why they were there. They discovered that the house contained a small metal box literally filled with small scraps of paper, none bigger than Erin’s hand, each covered in what appeared to be random scrawlings. To even get to the box, the man had dragged a piece of furniture away from a wall to reveal a hidden compartment, and the dust on the box had been years deep.
“Can I take these?” she had asked, but the man had bristled at the very idea and it was only after Mead had talked him down that he was willing to let her copy them. That afternoon had felt very defeating, as Erin had painstakingly copied out the apparently random scribbles into a larger tome. The old man had watched and, as soon as she finished copying one out, had snatched it back and carefully laid it in the box.
Erin thought back over this as she lay in her bed, relaxing in the warmth of Owen’s arms. They had pushed the twin beds together and, despite the gap in the middle, were able to at least be near to each other.
“Owen,” she began. “The old man, yesterday.”
“Crotchety git, wasn’t he?”
She elbowed him slightly. “Not that. He was strange, with those writings. Or scribbles. Whichever.”
“How so?”
Shifting slightly to be comfortable, Erin said “You weren’t around to see it all. I think you’d gone to the farmer’s house by then. It got… weird, I guess. He sat and watch me copy every one, then put it away in the box. Individually. And so carefully, like it was special. Holy.”
Owen stroked her belly. “Well, it is special. It is holy; we’re part of the Church too, remember?” Slight amusement came through in his voice.
“That’s not what I meant. I mean it was like… we take normal precautions with books. We take care of them. But this was extreme.” She rolled over and sat up, shaking his arm off. “These scribbles were meaningless, I’m almost sure. And he wasn’t saving them to read or look at; they came out of a box that hadn’t been touched or even looked at in years!”
“So he’s a little bit crazy about his paper.” Owen sighed and turned onto his back. “Odd you should mention it though. I guess, at the farmhouse, they were treating their books a little strangely. Or at least, the youngest child was.”
“Mmm?”
“None of the townsfolk can read, right?”
“Except Mead,” Erin said.
“Right. So the youngest daughter at the farmhouse, couldn’t be more than five, is a little blonde beauty with a blue dress, and she’s sat in front of the fire.”
“Go on.”
“Well,” Owen said, “I’m coming in from the outhouse, where I’d like to point out there was no paper. In fact, I’m amazed that this town of illiterates aren’t just using the books to clean themselves. But I digress.
“I come in, and the girl’s sat with a book across her knees. It’s close-written, quite thick, no pictures. She’s turning the pages in about the same amount of time it might take, say, an adult to read it out. I watch her for a few minutes.
“She looks up, sees me. I smiled and said ‘So what’re you doing?’ She says ‘Jeremiah’s reading me a story.’ I say ‘Is Jeremiah your friend?’ and she gives me this dirty look and shakes her head. ‘Are you looking at the pictures?’ I say, trying again, but she just looks at me like I’m stupid and says ‘Why would I do that? Pictures can’t tell me the story.’
“Well, at that moment her father came in and she carefully closed the book and put it back on the shelf. I took it down and opened it as soon as her back was turned. It was ‘A Treatise on Mountain Goats’ by one Jeremiah T. Willikins.”
“So the little girl can read?” Erin said, rolling over onto her side. She smiled, but when she saw the expression on Owen’s face she felt it slip.
“No,” he said, “she can’t. None of them can; her father was most insistent.”
“So they’re lying. They can read.”
“I don’t know.” He yawned. “There’s a lot to do tomorrow and the quicker it’s done, the quicker we can head back to civilisation. Away from people who can’t read and treat paper like it’s gold.”
“Not the paper, I think,” Erin murmured. “The writing.” She closed her eyes and was almost immediately asleep.

Mead put the earthenware coffeepot down on the table between the two breakfast plates. “Will there be anything else?” he said, dusting his hands off.
“Actually, yes,” Erin said, cutting Owen off before he could do much more than raise his head. “There’s a young girl out at the farmhouse. Can she read?”
Mead cocked his head curiously. “No,” he said, “I told you no-one could read. Only me.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t truly know,” Mead said. “There’s a superstition about it, I suppose.”
“Has anyone ever tried to learn?” Owen said.
“Not that I know.”
“What if-“
He was cut off by a shout from outside, and a crash. Erin struggled to her feet.
“The wagon!” she said, and started for the door. Owen, only a second behind her, was already taking his jacket off.
Outside, the scene was chaos. Five of the townsfolk had gathered around the wagon and a sixth was on top; it was the farmer, Erin noted, his rough homespun clothes askew as if he had dressed in a hurry. He had an enormous ginger beard and his arms were easily as thick around as her thighs.
“Stop!” she cried, coming to a halt a few feet away from the wagon. The townsfolk were tearing handfuls of books and papers out from under the canvas and throwing them to the winds, and as she looked around Erin realised that paper was strewn all over the yard. She saw the old man whose paper she had copied yesterday pulling out books left and right as if looking for something; a young girl, couldn’t be more than five, gleefully pulling pages out from a tome; a woman, floury apron kicking up clouds of dust as she stamped on several scrolls of maps from northern Dorth, and a pair of what appeared to be identical twin young men who were busy trying to undo the fastenings on the canvas.
“Please!” she screamed, and then Owen was among them, pulling an old man off balance, tearing the book away from the girl and shoving the woman aside. Then he jumped onto the driving platform and faced the farmer.
“Why are you doing this?” he shouted. “We came in peace; we were welcomed into your homes!”
“You profane the memories of those what have died,” the farmer replied. “The books, they…” he stopped, glowering, and put his hand behind his back. When he drew it out, he was holding a knife that was easily as long as his forearm. “We will take them back. The words. The people. The memories. All of it!” He stabbed down onto the canvas and tore a huge hole in it, causing papers to flutter every which way.
Erin cried out as he knees gave way; a deep pain came from within her and, as the papers flew all around like the first snows of winter, she knew that something was deeply wrong both in the town and inside her body. Owen, hearing her cry, turned and jumped down from the wagon. As she crumpled to the ground, he caught her under the arms.
Owen clutched Erin to his chest. “Are you ok?”
“The baby,” she murmured. “Something… it might be coming and- oh!” A lance of pain ripped through her from stomach to chest.
Sheer panic painted his face. “What do I do?”
“I don’t know!” Erin panted. “There’s…”
The sound of a flame igniting, that unmistakeable whoosh, caused them both to look in the direction of the wagon. The old man had brought out a torch from somewhere, a stick wrapped in oil-soaked cloth, and the twins had lit it with a fancy automatic flint-and-steel. The flames, even in the morning light, cast a hellish glow on everyone’s face. Owen clutched his wife tighter to him, powerless to watch as the old man passed the torch to the little girl. She curtsied, absurdly polite, and then moved towards the wagon. The farmer jumped down to stand next to her, then picked her up tenderly and placed her on his shoulders.
With a yell, she threw the torch directly onto the slit that he had cut. The papers in the wagon caught light almost immediately, the conflagration growing in mere seconds. The smell of burning paper filled the air and ash began to stream off of the wagon. Erin, tears streaming down her face, felt a part of herself burning up, shrivelling, turning to ash in concert with the wagon. She looked to the side to see the broad form of Mead. He was staring at the scene, but it wasn’t anger, fear or worry on his face.

It was satisfaction.

Saturday 21 December 2013

Story 7: Reclamation Team 5

Erin looked at Owen and smiled. The setting sun’s final rays pierced through the low-lying cloud and perfectly lit his golden-brown hair into a glowing halo. He looked over at her and mirrored her smile, the creases wrinkling unevenly at his scarred cheek. He turned back to concentrate on the road and Erin absently stroked the curve of her pregnant belly, buried as it was under three layers of fur against the night’s chill.
It was hard to imagine that they had been on the road for almost nine months already without break. Then again, she mused, it wasn’t as if the Church encouraged breaks in reclamation missions for anything much. Pregnancy was a mere mis-step in the grand plan, one that would lead to the child being fostered by one of the many monasteries just like Erin and her husband had.
“Nearly there,” Owen purred in his deep south accent. Erin felt a warm little quiver run through her; even after so long, his voice touched the part of her that loved him deeply. The cart rocked underneath them, drawing them forward into night and towards their journey’s final waypoint. Ahead, at the top of the mountain path, lay Westwatch; the town was nestled in the arms of a pair of mountains and represented the highest settlement in all of Ehrian. Such was its location that it was only accessible from the Dorthian side of the mountains and their route had wended its way south through pretty much the entire country of Dorth, then west through the mountains.
The two donkeys pulling the cart would barely have been able to muster more than a walking pace anyway, but the cart was now full of books and paperwork. This was an excursion that Reclamation Teams like theirs took every few years, to further one of the Church’s aims: to try and obtain a single copy of every written materials ever created. New versions of old texts needed to be sought out; new texts, written in the time since the last team swept the country, needed to be sourced and, where necessary, copied. It was a full-time job which required dedication, patience and the ability to spend a lot of time in a pair.
“Y’know, I was thinking,” Erin said, still gently stroking her belly.
“Mmm?”
“If it’s a boy-“
Owen flashed her a grin, his teeth white in the growing darkness. “Not this one again,” he said. “I thought we’d sorted it out.”
“Well, it’s not quite time yet. There’s still some time before… before we have to choose.”
“I thought it was Erika for a girl and Thomas for a boy.” The town eased closer, lights coming on as the sun’s light faded behind the horizon.
“I was kind of thinking Trip if it was a boy.”
They rode in silence for a short while. Then, when the town’s border was almost upon them, he sighed. “Trip? Isn’t it a little… new-age?”
“I was thinking it might be a nice way to remember that I carried him for the entire journey,” Erin said, feeling a little foolish. She shrugged. “I guess we can- oh!”
Owen pulled the cart up short at the edge of town and turned, take her face into his hands. He leaned forward and kissed her lightly on each cheek and once on the nose, his beard tickling her. She flushed, the warmth of him chasing away the night’s chill.
“I think it’s a lovely idea,” he said, smiling. “But if it’s a girl, we still get my choice. Erika.”
“Deal.”
Erin looked around the quiet street while Owen went into the nearest inn. The buildings were short, generally one storey, made of local stone and wood by the looks of things and seemed to be almost exclusively houses. A few windows had their shutters or curtains open, and just from where she was sat Erin could see several books in windows and, even as she watched, an old lady in the nearest house walked over to a laden shelf and reached up to carefully pull a dusty tome down. She looked up and noticed Erin watching. Erin smiled and waved, but the old woman scowled back and reached over to close the shutters with a slam.
Owen came out. “There’s a room, but it only has twin beds,” he said. “Do you think that will be fine?”
Erin shook her head. “I don’t know. Can you manage to not be disturbed by me getting up and down to the toilet all night?”
Owen laughed and began to lead the donkeys around to a small blank space next to the inn. He unhitched them and started to lead them around the side. “Do you think you can manage to get down by yourself?” he said over his shoulder.
Erin tutted. “You mind yourself, Owen Hazzard, and let me mind myself.” With an unladylike grunt, she slid over to the steps and climbed down from the driver’s platform.
She moved around to the back of the wagon and began tightening the fastenings on the piece of waterproof oil canvas that secured their load. Owen came back around.
“Kid in the stables charged me another ten coppers to take care of Betsy and Beth,” he said, starting to check the fastenings on the other side. “Still, he reckoned they have best-quality hay here. They import it from down on the plains, can’t grow any here, so they only bring in the best.” He dropped the fastening, patted and offered his hand to Erin.
The wagon battened down, husband and wife went arm-in-arm into the inn’s warmth.

Erin used the last of the rough mountain bread to clear the gravy from her bowl. The barman came over with fresh mugs of mead.
“Stew good?” he said, cleaning his hands on his spotless apron.
Erin nodded. “Amazing. What exactly was in it?”
He grinned. “Grandmother’s recipe. Potatoes, carrots, turnroot, a pinch of local herbs and some of the allspice that the traders bring in from time to time. A few local greens to go with it.”
She smiled. “Do you have it written down anywhere?”
The barman grinned. “You’re on a reclamation? You’re with the Church, right?”
Owen nodded. “There was one that came through here, but it was over two decades ago.” He smiled ruefully. “Based on the journey we had up here, I can’t imagine why it’s been missed for so long.”
“Wait here,” the barman said, and disappeared back into the kitchen. In a minute or two he was back, piece of paper in hand. “I remember when the last team came through; I wasn’t lettered in those days. My daughter’s influence,” he said. “Written down now, though. Guess you’re wantin’ a copy?”
“Many thanks,” Owen said, taking the paper. It was signed ‘Cory Mead’. “This you?” he asked.
“Ain’t no-one else here that can write, when my daughter’s not in town!” Mead said. “Whole town’s pretty much illiterate, but the girl wanted me to be able to write to her while she travels, and read her notes.” He shrugged. “Besides, it helps; one or two of the townsfolk have had books for a while and they don’t know what they’ve got.”
Owen grimaced. “We have no way of knowing what the last team to come through will have taken a copy of.”
“I can probably help,” Mead said. “I’ve had chance to see most of the writings here in the town, big or little.” He leaned on the table, his enormous arms bare and bunched with muscles. “Tell you what.You’re staying here tonight, right?” Owen and Erin nodded. “Well, in the mornin’ I’ll take you round each of the houses where I know there’s writings. Introduce you to some of the townsfolk.” He shook his head. “They’re a suspicious lot but they trust me. I’ll get you in, make your job a little easier.”
Owen stood up and stuck a hand out. “You’d do that?”
Mead shook his hand. “‘Course I would.” He laughed. “I’ll do anythin’ I can do to help the only guests we’ve had to the town in over a month”
Erin shifted awkwardly in her seat. Despite the cushion, the wooden bench was less than comfortable. “Business bad?”
“We’re a long way off anywhere useful here, and like I say; the townsfolk are suspicious,” Mead said. He lowered his voice. “I came to this town nigh on twenty five years ago and, well… there’s not been any movement since then. No-one in, no-one out, apart from the occasional lost person, casual visitor or reclamation team. It’s not like there’s anywhere to pass through on the way to.”
“Well, I hope it won’t be an inconvenience if we stay a few nights,” Owen said. “Maybe as much as a week.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Mead said. “See you tomorrow mornin’!”
Erin pushed her empty bowl away. “Owen, I…”
Owen met her eye. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know if it’s just emotions running wild now that the babe’s nearly here. Or whether it’s just intuition.” She lowered her voice and leaned closer to her husband. “I don’t trust this place suddenly.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Owen said, exuding confidence in every word. “We’ll get what we need and be done here in a few days, anyway. Chances are the townsfolk’ll let us take the copies of books they’ve got now, if they can’t read them.”

“That would be great,” Erin said, taking in the sight of her husband. His broad shoulders were well-defined under the shirt he wore, his roughly woven trousers hiding legs that she knew could carry him for miles if needed. They had faced dangerous situations before out on the road, and both had the scars to prove it, but the added vulnerability that had grown within her in the last months made the world seem a darker place. As the conversation of the townsfolk around her rose and fell like a gentle tide, she closed her eyes and snuggled closer to the man she loved.

Friday 20 December 2013

Story 6: Murder on the Inira Express

“Once,” I began, “there was a boy. The boy’s name isn’t really important right now, but his parentage certainly was. He was the son of Ming Bao, the famous investigator.”
Hiri cocked his head to one side. “You had a son?”
“Don’t interrupt me.”
He looked a little surprised at being spoken to in such a way, but closed his flapping mouth.
“Now. This boy was quite happy in his early youth, astounded by his father’s wisdom and able to follow most of the deductive leaps he made. They worked well together, and the father loved his son very much.” I swallowed the lump in my throat, straining to ensure that my voice remained strong. “Everything was fine until the day that a quartet of junior officials in the empire of Koru decided that the Emperor himself represented the biggest losses for the banks and treasuries of the empire, and that he needed to be done away with. Simple, really.”
Hiri’s face paled a little. I narrowed my eyes. “Is any of this sounding at all familiar, Hiri?”
The notary all but inflated with righteous indignation. “I’ve… I’ve never heard of anything so preposterous, man. I should have you arrested for treasonous talk like this!”
“But you won’t,” I said, “because then this little story might come out into the open. You see, there was a problem with merely killing the Emperor. He was good friends with perhaps the finest mind that the generation had produced, the famous investigator Ming Bao. So, naturally, Ming Bao had to be removed first. Messages were passed to elite agents. He was duly invited to the palace. He brought his son with him. Unknowing, servants served tea to the pair, which was poisoned. The Captain of the Guard chose that moment to come into their presence and the famous investigator leaped immediately to his feet to greet the newcomer while his son, not as quick on the uptake, drank his tea.”
I gritted my teeth and sat back. “Oh, it burned the boy, the poison, more than enough to kill a man, more than enough to kill ten men, but for a boy?” I shook my head. “The boy rushed headlong into darkness and collapsed at the feet of the Captain and Ming Bao. There was a prolonged weeping and a wailing; his distraught father, an inconsistent drug-taker, took a lethal overdose in his despair at being left alone. For the boy, a small private funeral was had the day after this father died, and the boy was consigned to a coffin.”
I closed my eyes. “But the boy was not dead. The poison, such an overdose, had placed his mind in a sort of suspension and slowed his vital processes to the point where even the Emperor’s own chirurgeon couldn’t identify whether he was alive or not. When the boy awoke in the coffin, at first he couldn’t do anything against the panic in his mind. The absolute fear overwhelmed everything. But eventually he deduced where he was, calm logic soothing the angry waters of his mind. The coffin was cheap and he was able to pull it apart, and the soil above him, for he had already been buried, was loose.
“Can you imagine what it must have been like?” I opened my eyes. “No, I suppose you can’t. But being born again, with all faculties intact, from a grave, and to gaze upon the stone marking the spot and discovering that you share that grave with the father who raised you!”
“I fail to see what this has to do with-“ Hiri began, but I was quicker.
“It has everything to do with you, you old fool,” I hissed. “You were one of the four who consigned my father to the grave, and nearly me with him, this day so many years ago! You think that, because you got cold feet after causing the death of not just one of the Emperor’s favourites but also his son, that you are somehow absolved of your crime?”
Real pain for the first time touched Hiri’s face. “It wasn’t like that. We never meant to cause a death; we asked for the problem of Ming Bao to go away, for him to be sent somewhere, disgraced. Whoever was sent to do that escalated it into an assassination instead.” He leaned forward, hands clasped on the table as if he were making an offering at the temple. “You have to understand, we meant no harm to you or your father!”
“And yet, here we are, Notary Hiri. Here we are.” I tapped the file, still lying between us on the table. The blood, which had been glistening in a sickly fashion, was drying even as we watched. “I watched, Hiri. I waited. I developed my skills, not just as my father had taught me but in another direction altogether. Oh, it is so easy to think myself into the mind of a criminal. How do you think I caught all of those so-called masterminds? Half of them were put there by me to begin with!” I shoved the file towards Hiri and he opened it. I watched his eyes track down the page, all the while examining and re-examining the feelings whirling inside me. The deductive part of my mind, the one that was my father’s legacy to me, never slept.
“You are the Desert Wind?”
“I am.” I thought about the empty compartment in first class. The character of Jef’nerin, one I had seen in a book as a small child. The book I had been buried with after taking it to the Emperor’s Palace on that day. It had become the shell that had for so long been a part of my psyche that it was like losing a friend to say goodbye to it. The separate parts of myself were finally knitting together as I performed this last operation. I felt the parts of me that I had long ago walled off against this day finally reunite with everything my father had taught me.
“You killed the other three.” It was a statement, not a question. I nodded slowly.
“Yes. You must have realised that it was those three, the three conspirators from your past.”
He laughed bitterly. “So many people die in the Emperor’s employ every week; it was unsurprising that you were able to kill these three without much notice by anyone but the Stationmaster. I suppose you planned to be invited onto this rail?”
“Of course. It was the most sensible course of action for the beleaguered Stationmaster, to invite the great Ming Bao, whose career has spanned two lifetimes, to solve the crimes plaguing his rail.”
“And now you will kill me?” Hiri closed the file, calmer now.
“No.” I smiled. “I already have.” My grin widened. “Think, Hiri; why are you here, on the rail?”
“I am the receiving agent for Benjen’s last order of materials and clothing,” Hiri said. “Loelle Benjen sent me a communication, along with her husband’s ring, that his account was to be closed due to a buyer being found… in Inira.” His eyes widened. “You are the buyer!”
“How else was I going to ensure that you were on this rail? You had no other business in this part of the world, and it had to be… today. And you know what makes it damnably worse?” I shook my head. “You remember all of this. That’s why you tried to stop me from boarding the rail, why you assigned three men to prevent me. But it didn’t matter. Even had I never boarded the rail you would have still died at the appointed time. My involvement was not essential, just poetic.”
“You still haven’t explained how you plan to kill me.”
“It is wonderfully simple, my dear Notary Hiri. You still have the letter with you that Ms Benjen sent, confirming the end of the contract. Yes? I know you do, because the remains of the purple wax that sealed it were on your fingernails when I first met you, and the ring still had traces of it as well.”
“Wax? You plan to kill me with wax?”
How could he be so stupid, I wondered, then tempered the thought with the safe knowledge that, compared to myself, everyone seemed this stupid. “Not the wax; what is in the wax. Miss Benjen was merely the catalyst for all this; I took the liberty of swapping the wax that her husband normally would have used for some of my own devising, some with a little something extra added. Have you ever heard the warnings, Hiri, about not putting something in the amber locker?”
With a shaking hand, Hiri reached into his document case and pulled out the envelope which I knew contained Loelle’s missive to him regarding her husband’s account. He turned it over to look at the seal, which glistened oddly in the light. I noticed immediately that the structure of the seal was breaking down as it heated up, absorbing the surrounding energy from the rail, nearing critical mass.
Quick as a flash I slammed my hand flat onto the envelope and drove it out of Hiri’s hand, sticking the wax seal to the unfortunate man’s forehead. The impact gave it extra energy and the amber, so cleverly mixed in to the wax, began to ignite.
Hiri screamed. I leaned over and locked the door from the inside. The smell of burning flesh began to fill the compartment as the seal melted its way through the man’s forehead and started on the bone; his screams reached a glorious crescendo as it moved on to his brain, and died away as the substance began to eat away at the back of his skull.
Had I not done anything, the seal would eventually have exploded; passing through so much of the rail had already given it enough potential energy for that, but this way it was so much more fitting. As Hiri slumped forward he fell onto the file containing the only things linking me to the Desert Wind and I watched as a burning glob of something fell onto the paper and began to burn it.
I sat back and watched the flames dance higher.


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