The Incorruptibles (16 page)

Beleth actually
winked
at the men and then walked from the room. I looked at Samantha, and her face remained blank, waxen. She ignored my stare and followed her master.

Neither of them noticed the looks of absolute horror on the faces of the soldiers.

Later, in my room, I sat on the bed and watched the flickering yellow light of an
imp
batting its tattered wings against the fine silver cage. I felt more worn than after a week of riding in stretcher territory.

I opened the window and let the frigid air in. I wanted a drink but didn’t know how to go about getting one on the
Cornelian
, and right then I couldn’t move to save my tainted soul.

I don’t know how long I sat like that, staring into the wood panelling. Eventually, a soft knock came at the door. I opened it. Livia stood there, holding a bottle.

She said, ‘Secundus told me what Beleth is doing to the
vaettir
.’ She put the bottle on the writing desk and took my hand in hers. She looked at me, close, but I couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘You want to tell me about it?’

I shook my head. What was there to say? It’s a monster of a world, and we make our way through it as best we can.

She released my hand and poured two glasses of liquor, I don’t know what kind. She put the tumbler in my palm and I drank – sweet, fiery liquor I’d never tasted before, amber-coloured, full of spices and the hint of citrus.

When I had finished, she poured me another, patted my shoulder.

‘Shoestring,’ she said, and I realized this was the first time she’d called me by my nickname. ‘I’m sorry for what we’ve done to you.’

I looked at her, and she stood there, nervous, pale, and beautiful. I realized she truly was sorry. I nodded. She smiled sadly, making the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes crease, and went to the door.

‘I’ll have Lupina come around, bring food.’

I nodded again, watching the
imp
throw itself against its silver cage. Livia left.

I lay down on my bed and thought about Agrippina for a long time. Eventually I rose, pulled on my boots, pulled on gloves, and put a gilded silver longknife in my belt. I went back to the great hall.

The legionaries guarding Agrippina nodded to me as I entered. She was naked still, and most of the injuries from her interrogation had become angry red scars – a fine lattice-work crisscrossing her face, her breasts, her stomach and legs.

Vaettir
heal fast.

Her head pivoted toward me on a long, gimballed neck. Her lips, flaked with dried blood, pulled back to reveal her jagged teeth in a horrible parody of a smile.

I put a gloved hand on the haft of my longknife.

‘I can end this for you,’ I said in
dvergar
and watched her face. It was like stone, and her watery eyes remained still as a mountain pool untouched by man or wind. ‘You say the word, and I’ll end it.’

She remained motionless for a long while, staring at me, her eyes like pools gathering light. She glanced at the nearest guard. Then back to me.

‘They might not kill me,’ I said.

Her smile grew. She moved her shackled arm, and the chains gave a faint rattle.

‘That I can’t do, ma’am.’

Agrippina opened and snapped shut her mouth like a beaver-trap. Fast. Her teeth clacked together.

‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’ I sighed. ‘It will get worse, you know. You’re unbowed now. But that man … he won’t let you die before you break.’

She smiled again, her newly healed lips pulling away from teeth.

On my way out, a burly legionary hefting a shotgun said, ‘Hey, what’d you say to her? The engineer’s ordered us to report all activity.’

‘I asked her the same questions we asked today.’

‘Huh.’ He looked puzzled. ‘Why?’

‘Thought she might be more talkative without someone cuttin’ on her.’

‘That was a wash out, then.’

‘Bullseye.’

SEVENTEEN

Fisk is stingy with words. It’s in his nature. But when he returned without the girl, carrying another gunshot wound, and accompanied by a fierce-faced, tawny-haired Northman aedile, we didn’t need telling to know that there’d be trouble without a full accounting.

Again, we gathered in the small stateroom. The faces of the Cornelian brood, and of Beleth, Samantha and Cimbri, were like stone, mirroring Fisk’s, as he told what happened after he left the
Cornelian
. Later, many years later, I passed through Broken Tooth and got the rest of the story from the townsfolk there.

What I heard then was piece-meal. What I know now is still patchwork. Fisk can be as miserly with his words as he wants, gods rest his soul, but it’s a story that wants telling. And I am growing old now, and need to tell it.

After my departure, Fisk had ridden on.

He rode North, to the very edge of the Hardscrabble Territories where the land plateaus up to a salt desert and the sky grows brittle, the big black restless beneath him, steady and uncowed by the wind in the moisture-less, freezing air.

Wild shadows – always at the corner of his eye – moved with him. They did not follow me.

The Salt Flats are rippled and rough and specked with strange rock formations that look like huge, gnarled fingers pushing up through the earth, twisted and veined and white with lime. Fisk rode the black, frothed and foaming even in the chill, through the strange protrusions, up a rocky escarpment and back down into a crevasse where he hobbled the horse, withdrew his carbine, and scrambled back up to the escarpment’s ridge. He wrapped himself in his oilcoat, took out his pouch of tobacco, and, instead of rolling a cigarette, put a pinch in his lean, hard jaw and worked it into a mash.

Fisk’s gaze never stopped roaming.

Through the night he waited, as the moon rose in the crystalline sky and hard pinpricks of stars gleamed and wheeled in the heavens above the gnarled stone fingers. His breath in the cold air came in white plumes. Inside the oilcoat, his body ached from days in the saddle with only a few hours here and there for rest. His thigh itched where the stretcher arrow had transfixed it only a fortnight before.

He waited. The coyotes began yipping in the distance, and the moon, near full, fell westerly in the starlit vault of sky.

Fisk, weary from days on the trail, closed his eyes.

The shadows were almost on top of him when he awoke. The moon was gone, and the land had grown dark. Two impossibly tall figures darted from shadow to shadow, up the escarpment, sticking to the gnarled stone fingers.

Fisk gripped his carbine and waited.

In the starlight, the lead
vaettir
’s hair looked grey, dark. But Fisk knew it was red. Berith. The one who’d shot him on the plains.

Berith crept closer, his long legs propelling him over the earth, toward Fisk’s position.

Fisk waited.

Berith paused mid-footfall, almost in parody of a sneak-thief. His face remained in shadow, and Fisk peered hard at the stretcher. The
vaettir
remained still.

The second
vaettir
came forward, and the one Fisk called Berith raised his hand to stop him.

‘Oh, shit,’ Fisk murmured. He threw off the oilcoat as he rose and began to fire, filling the night air with burning silver, holly, and the stench of brimstone.

He hit Berith twice, once in the chest, and again in the arm. The shots knocked him backward, tumbling over and over, arse over head, down the escarpment.

The other
vaettir
gave a high screech of pure rage and somersaulted forward, hands suddenly holding two wicked-curved longknives, its head wreathed in wild flying hair.

Time stretched like molasses, and Fisk’s body thrummed with action. He clenched his teeth and levered another
imp
round into the chamber in a lightning-fast and smooth movement, took aim at the flying
vaettir
, and squeezed the trigger.

At the apex of its leap, it jerked and twisted, rolling in the air. It hit the ground with a heavy thump, scattering loose rock and shale with a dry clatter.

Fisk jumped forward, working the action on the carbine, and put another round in the fallen
vaettir
, still struggling to rise. Again, he fired into the prostrate form. It jerked and twitched. Two steps closer and he put his boot on the stretcher’s neck, jammed the carbine’s barrel into the
vaettir
’s eye socket, and fired. The stretcher’s head distended and went slack, blood and grey bits splattering on the dusty earth.

Carbine held in white-knuckled hands, his chest rising and falling, taking in huge draughts of air, Fisk turned back to where Berith had tumbled.

Berith was nowhere to be seen. Fisk whirled around. At the top of one of the limestone fingers, a shadow crouched, arms stretched out as though to jump. Fisk sighted and fired.

The shadow arced into the air in a blur, flipping backward and screeching a high, angry sound, falling away out of sight. Fisk ran after him, ignoring his arrow-struck leg. He ran among the gnarled white stones, firing at the blur of his adversary as it bounded from stone-top to stone-top, clawed hands scrabbling at rock and whipping through the air.

Berith gave a strange, piercing yelp and dived behind a large formation. Fisk reached the rock and went around the side, gun at the ready, waiting to shoot.

‘Ia-damn you, you son of a whore. I must have nailed you,’ Fisk said, furious. ‘Come on, you bastard.’

Nothing.

Silence stretched out and not even the clatter of shale shifting underfoot sounded above the stir of the Salt Flats.

Fisk turned back to the downed
vaettir
, sprinting, his spurs making bright chinging sounds in the night.

The body was gone.

The dust of more than ten days hung on Fisk when the three highwaymen stepped from the bramblewrack lining the road into Broken Tooth.

The black was beyond exhaustion, shivering in the cold air after so many days on the trail. It nickered at the highwaymen’s appearance.

‘Long ride, looks like,’ the largest of them said. He had jet-black whiskers, dark circles under his eyes, and lean, muscled arms. He hooked his thumbs on his gunbelt.

Fisk cracked a feral smile. The big man was armed, and one of the other two had a pistol, but the last had only a longknife.

‘Long trail is right,’ Fisk said, waiting. He held the reins loose in one hand, let the other pull back the oilcoat and expose his Hellfire. ‘Looking forward to a drink in yonder Broken Tooth.’

‘You’ll be walking the rest of the way, mister.’ The big man’s voice sounded like rocks clattering down the mountainside. ‘We’ll be taking that fine horse and whatever money you’ve got.’

Fisk laughed once and the smile died on his face. ‘Tell you what. Just because I don’t feel like wetting the ground with your blood, I got ten denarii for you boys.’ He let the reins fall to his saddlehorn and dipped his fingers into a pocket of his trousers, waiting for the big man’s move. The black nickered again and shifted underneath him.

The dark-haired man tensed, drawing up his shoulders as though awaiting a blow, and began to draw.

Fisk whipped out his pistol and fired, sending a bright afterimage of a winged
daemon
booming into the night. The big man grabbed at his chest, body hitching, with a surprised look on his face. His companion slapped leather and found a matching hole above his heart, burbling his lifeblood out and over his shirt and vest, steaming into the night air. Blood spattered the third man, who had been standing behind them, and he turned and fled before the gunshot pair had begun to fall.

Fisk holstered his pistol and withdrew the carbine. He levered a round into the chamber, raised the gun to his shoulder, and sighted the fleeing man as he ran. After a few moments, he squeezed the trigger and the fleeing man gave a gurgling yelp and fell.

‘Ia-damned fools,’ Fisk said, and he kicked his horse into movement toward the lights of Broken Tooth.

EIGHTEEN

Fisk flicked his cigarette into the street, turned away from the stables and walked to where the sounds of laughing men and clanking glasses grew louder. An out-of-tune piano filtered through the sounds of the saloon. The scent of wood smoke hung low and fragrant in the frigid air, and he could feel the warmth of unwashed bodies and a large fire coming from the building with a weathered and worn sign proclaiming it a saloon with rooms to let, under the proprietorship of one Ruby.

He pushed open the doors and the noise died down but didn’t cease as the patrons turned to stare. A gust of cold air pushed past Fisk into the warm saloon, and some of the denizens shivered.

He entered the building, saddlebags over his shoulder, carbine in hand. At the bar, he said, ‘Whiskey. Leave the bottle. And steak. Bloody.’

The bartender, a young, hard-faced
dvergar
woman, said, ‘Ain’t got no steak. There’s stew. Maybe a duck.’

‘Duck, then. Meat. Cheese. Whatever you got.’ He dug in his pocket for some of the money Cimbri gave him before he left the
Cornelian
. ‘A room. A bath.’ He tossed an aureus on to the deeply stained wood of the bar. The gold coin spun, glinting in the light from the lanterns and hearthfire. The bartender’s eyes grew wide, and she snatched it up, bit it, and then tucked it away into her apron.

‘I figure that should cover me and more.’

She retrieved a brown earthen bottle and a dark, rough ceramic cup and placed them in front of him. He pulled the cork with his teeth, spat it on the bar, poured a measure and knocked it back.

‘Keep the change, ma’am.’

The bartender nodded and began mopping at the counter with a dirty rag. Fisk lifted his rifle and placed his saddlebags on the counter, looked at the bartender. Wordlessly, she took them from him and placed them behind the bar. He poured another drink and dumped it down his throat, squinting his eyes as it burned.

‘There was a couple came through here before me. I was supposed to be meeting them. Young man, pretty girl. They’d have been tired.’

‘Ain’t seen ’em. No one through here ’cept prospectors and cartographers. And the painter.’

‘The painter?’

‘Some shithouse-rat crazy painter, wanting to document life out on the plains.’

‘Damnation! – the man must be addled.’

‘He’s fucked up, that’s for sure.’

‘Obliged if you let me know when they get here.’

‘Didn’t get your name.’

‘The name’s Fisk.’

For a while, he just stood there at the bar, slowly pouring small amounts of whiskey into the ceramic cup, inhaling sharply after he drank each shot. The bartender brought out a plate with half a duck, swimming in grease, some potatoes and a hunk of dark, grainy bread. He took the plate into the dining area and, finding no tables empty, simply sat down at an occupied one and began to eat.

‘Can’t you see we’re talkin’ here?’ A fat man in overalls and a threadbare coat said, bristling. The other man at the table raised his eyebrows.

Fisk poured some whiskey into the glass in front of the fat man. ‘Happy birthday,’ Fisk said, waiting until the man raised his cup and drank before settling into his meal.

Fisk ate slowly, his lean stubbled cheeks working hard as he chewed away, until the duck was gone. He soaked the fat into the bread and ate that with the potatoes. After a while, the fat man and his companion continued their conversation.

‘Coming through from Fort Brust, maybe we can get on at Bonaventure.’

‘Might be. I served as a supply aedile during the first expansion, when them beaners were a’raiding.’

‘Think they’ll run the rails through Broken Tooth?’

‘Might be. We’re close to the Snake so they can take on water. And it’s a straight shot to Passasuego, heading west.’

‘This fucking town could sure use it.’

The fat man nodded his head and focused on his drink. ‘Hard to believe they’ve got a monster pushing them wheels.’

‘Hell, they’re Rumans – they’d strap their mothers to an axle if they thought they could move goods.’

Fisk paused eating and said, ‘That’s for damned sure.’

The men went silent.

When Fisk was through, the plate scraped clean except for a pile of duck bones, he poured the fat man another drink. He followed that by pouring one for his friend, and leaned back from the table, his own cup in hand.

‘Let me ask you a question, now that we’re all chummy,’ Fisk said. He knocked back his whiskey and continued, ‘You seen a young man, dark hair, probably dusty and cold from a long haul on the trail? He might be in a Ruman cavalry outfit. But he’d be packing Hellfire.’ Hellfire pistols were expensive and Fisk looked pointedly at the fat man’s bare waist. He sipped his whiskey. ‘He’d have a young dark girl with him, Medieran. Long hair, brown eyes? Pretty?’

‘You a bounty hunter?’

‘You could say that.’

‘Let’s have some more of that whiskey so I can collect my memory.’

The man had two glasses before he admitted he had not seen the pair.

Fisk stood up, holding the bottle. ‘Gentlemen, thank you for the company. You see a pair matching that description, and I’ll stand you to more than just a couple of drinks.’

There was an upright-piano player, a thin, jaundiced Gallish man, drunkenly playing and begging for tips and drinks in a lilting, slurry accent. Fisk, warm and loose now that he’d eaten and most of the whiskey had made its way inside of him, ignored his natural distaste of Galls and strolled across the room, spurs making bright sounds in the barroom.

He stood by the player, rested his elbow on the piano top. The piano-player looked up at him.

‘You know “The White Rose of Cordova”?’

The men spread his index finger and thumb down the length of his moustache, plastering it to his bloodless upper lip. ‘Of course, monsieur. I know many popular songs.’

Fisk flipped a sesterius at the man. He snatched it out of the air, smiling.

‘Very generous, sir.’

‘Play that every half-hour. Starting now.’

‘I will, kind sir.’

‘Let’s hear it.’

The piano player worked through the intro of the song and began singing the words in a warbling voice:

‘
A stone wall, high and proud,

Surrounds the garden grounds …
’

Fisk stared at the common room, watching the tables of threadbare men, drinking everything they could afford in hopes of forgetting their pains and incessant labours. A hard life, out on the plains, here in the Hardscrabble Territories.

No one looked up, no one noticed Fisk watching. A couple of trampled, run-down whores worked a table of men playing cards.

His smoke hadn’t chased out any vermin.

Fisk went to the bartender, bought another bottle, took a drink, and asked, ‘You got an aedile in this town?’

‘He’s a Northman, so he fancies himself a sheriff. Name’s Reeve.’

‘A sheriff? Like a chieftain or something?’

‘Somewhat. He wears a hand-forged Northstar brooch on his chest, like the rest of them star-worshipping pagans.’

‘Damnation, how’d he get appointed?’

‘Word is he saved a nobleborn in a skirmish against the beaners,’ she said, covering her mouth as she said the last word. ‘The patrician had some pull with the governor.’

‘Cornelius?’

‘Shit, no. Marcellus.’

‘Marcellus ain’t the governor.’

‘Hell he ain’t.’

‘Marcellus is a legate.’

‘Same damned thing.’

‘Right,’ Fisk said, shrugging at the woman’s ignorance. ‘Where’s he at?’

She chucked her head at the front door. ‘He’ll be down the street at the jail, sleeping, most like. Either that or at the whorehouse.’

Fisk thanked her, retrieved his carbine, and went back into the cold.

Lucious Reeve was asleep in a hammock, cradling a bottle, when Fisk entered the jail. The
daemonfire
lighting – a luxury in a town such as Broken Tooth – showed three small cells, the largest acting as an office for the aedile with two benches near the barred windows, and a desk littered with papers.

Fisk strode to the desk, his spurs ringing in the close quarters, and rifled through the papers. Mostly edicts and policy changes from Fort Brust or New Damnation. Some signed by Marcellus and others by Lucullus the Younger.

Reeve stirred, shifted, and began snoring.

Fisk approached the cell, grabbed the iron door, and swung it shut with a clatter. Reeve shot up, fumbling for his Hellfire.

‘What in the blazes?’ He nearly flipped the hammock trying to get out, gun in hand. ‘What the hell ye think yer doing?’

Fisk looked at the man, now behind bars. ‘I thought I was looking for an aedile. Instead I found a sot, napping.’ He sucked his teeth and looked around the jail. ‘You know where I can find aedile Reeve?’

‘Stand a’fore ye.’ He tapped a tin star affixed to his chest. ‘I’m sheriff in these parts.’

‘Huh. The dwarf at the bar said you fancied yourself a chieftain.’

The man’s face purpled, and his thick moustache twitched. ‘Ain’t no chieftain, citizen. Sheriff’s the lawman in the Gaellands shires, blessed by the stars.’

‘This here’s the Hardscrabble Territories.’

‘Same stars overhead.’

Fisk opened the cell door, and motioned the man to exit.

Reeve holstered his pistol, uncorked the bottle and took a swig. ‘So, what’s so Ia-damned important that ye had to rouse me from my winter’s nap?’

‘I’m on orders from Senator Cornelius, the governor.’ Fisk withdrew a silver eagle from his vest pocket.

Reeve’s eyes widened. ‘A centurion, then.’

‘Acting.’ Fisk held out his hand.

Instead of taking it, Reeve slapped the bottle into his palm. ‘It’s mescal, from the maguey.’

Fisk unstoppered the bottle, took a long pull, inhaled sharply, then said, ‘Passing acquainted. Looking for a couple. A boy – a man who ran off with a person of importance.’

‘Person of importance?’

‘Imperial importance.’

‘Well, what do ye want from me?’

‘You seen anyone like that?’

‘A boyish man and a person of Imperial importance? Nay, haven’t seen ’em.’

‘He’s a man, my height, looks a bit like me, maybe half my age. Dark hair. Packing Hellfire. Might be in cavalry uniform, might not. The girl—’

‘Girl?’ Reeve laughed. ‘Ye said person of Imperial importance.’

‘Yeah, a girl. Pretty. Long neck, fine features. Olive skin.’

‘Sounds dee-lightful.’

‘Seen ’em?’

‘Nay, I’ve not.’

Fisk cursed, placed his hand on his Hellfire pistol, shifted his weight – thinking. ‘I need you to keep an eye out, then. They’ll be riding from the south, Big Rill way.’

‘Trouble always comes from Big Rill way. North? There’s only the Big Empty.’

‘I’m staying at Ruby’s. Gonna sleep off the trail.’ Fisk took another pull off the bottle and then handed it back to Reeve. ‘You’ll need to watch the street.’

‘Aye. Go, centurion. I can give ye some respite.’

Fisk put out his hand, and the men gripped forearms.

Fisk rolled out of bed and had already levered an
imp
into the chamber of the carbine when the banging on his door stopped.

‘It’s Reeve.’

‘Ia-dammit, man. Come in.’

Reeve entered the small bedroom. It was late, now, very late, but the sounds from the barroom had only increased in the few hours Fisk had been asleep. Fisk tossed the carbine onto the room’s single, mussed bed. He sat down on the mattress and pulled on his boots.

‘Couple rode in from the south. Followed them to the saloon. Might be the birds you’re looking for.’

Fisk rubbed his face. ‘Man and woman? Good lookers, the both of them?’

‘Cloaked heavily, but they come matching ye description, as far as me old eyes can see.’

‘From the south?’

‘Aye, just as you said, centurion.’

‘Have the piano player do “The White Rose of Cordova” and see how they react. I’ll be waiting out front.’

‘Ye going through the bar? They’ll see ye.’

‘There’s the window.’

Reeve looked from Fisk, to the window, and back.

‘Gods save ye from madness.’

Fisk moved to the dresser, threw water on his face from the basin, towelled off. He grabbed his gunbelt and strapped on the Hellfire. He chucked his head at the door. ‘You might want to mosey on back down, don’t let them get out of your sight.’

‘There was something else.’

‘Something else?’

‘Aye. The birds rode in and made a beeline for Ruby’s. I’m on watch in the shadows of the mercantile porch. Once they were inside, I hung back, just to let them get a’settled.’

Fisk withdrew a pistol from the holster, emptied the
imp
rounds into his hand, and ran a calloused thumb over each warding. He thumbed the rounds back into the pistol’s fixed cylinder. His hands moved quickly, making short work of both guns.

‘I caught it only from the corner of me eye. A blur.’ Reeve shook his head as though clearing it. ‘Like a spirit following behind the pair. Couldn’t get a bead on it.’

‘Big thing. Moving fast?’

‘Aye. Fast and tall, it was.’

Fisk stood looking out the window, cursing, rolling the words in his mouth, slow and deliberate. Spitting the words. ‘Ia-dammit.’

He went to his saddlebags and withdrew a small box. ‘If you’ve got any extra men, get them now. If they have Hellfire pistols, load up with these.’

‘Special rounds?’

Fisk nodded. ‘Silver. Holly tipped. Made special by Cornelius’ tame engineer.’

The sheriff’s eyes widened. ‘What’re ye saying, man? We facing unbound
daemons
like roam in the Northern Protectorate?’

‘Worse.
Vaettir.
’

‘Damnation. I thought they remained content to stay in the Whites.’ Reeve popped open the box, removed the bullets from his pistol, and replaced them with the holly-tipped rounds, cursing. ‘Ye bring trouble with ye, centurion.’

‘Seems I’ve a knack for it.’ Fisk levered a round into the carbine, shrugged on his oilcoat. He held his hat in his hands, ran his fingers around the grey brim’s edge, and placed it on his head. ‘Remember, “The White Rose of Cordova”. Let them see you looking at them. The boy—’ He put his boot over the window casement, stopped, and looked back at Reeve. ‘The
man
, he’s deadly. Stay out of his way. Once he sees me, he won’t be focused on the girl as much. That’s when you should try to grab her.’