Jeffrey Lyman
Toten stared at Thierra. His wife sat at the kitchen table, spinning a teacup with her fingers, not meeting his eyes, her mouth pulled down in a light frown. She still wore last night’s dress, though it was mid-morning, and she looked exhausted.
“How much did you lose this time?” he asked. His eyes drifted up to the small window behind the sink, looking out at another window into another drab kitchen a few feet away. A bouquet of dead flowers that Thierra had gathered weeks ago sat in a vase near the window. Dried, yellow petals had puddled on the counter beneath it.
For an excellent thief, one of the best, he should have been able to afford a flat significantly higher in the city. But until Thierra stopped gambling, they lived near the mud-choked streets.
“I almost won,” she said with a trace of defiance and frustration in her voice. “If that fat old Mr. Sochett hadn’t cheated, I’d have cleaned house. I was this close!”
There was movement in the corner of his eye, but Toten didn’t look at her. No doubt, she held up her fingers, pinched with the first finger and thumb almost touching. This close. It was always this close.
“How much?”
“A hundred thousand,” she said sheepishly.
This time he did look at her, his head snapping around, but she was staring into her teacup as if it might reveal the winner of an upcoming horse race, or the next card, or the next roll of the dice.
“A hundred thousand?” He sagged against the counter and tried to swallow, but his throat had suddenly gone dry.
“I was up eighty thousand,” she said.
“That doesn’t do us any good, does it?”
She leaned back and rubbed her neck. “What are we gonna do?” It was always we when she lost.
His breath wheezed in and out as he tried to think. “I got thirty thousand from my share of that last job at the docks. That would have dug us out. There aren’t any other big jobs coming up.”
She twisted the belt on her skirt. She was twisting hard.
“What?” he said.
“Mr. Beraghar holds the debt. He said we have to pay within the week, and if we don’t have the money, he has a job for you.”
“You gambled at one of Beraghar’s houses?” he sputtered, fully facing her now and gripping the back of the empty kitchen chair. Mr. Beraghar should have gone to the guild of Masons and Builders with his request. The guild assigned thieves. That Mr. Beraghar was going through Thierra meant the guild had turned him down. Certain jobs were too dangerous or political for the guild to accept.
“He said it’ll clear the books.”
Toten turned back to the dirty kitchen window. In the other kitchen, a wife in a housecoat and yellow belt walked past carrying a pot. “It’ll clear the books? A hundred thousand just like that? You know that means it’s going to be ugly. Probably something against the Baron.” Something that could get Toten killed.
“I don’t know what else to do! We can pay him the thirty thousand, and you can borrow the rest from the guild maybe?”
“I’m already paying off the forty thousand I borrowed for you last month.”
She shrank on herself. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wanted to cash out, but I was winning.”
“Of course, you were! They let you win, drove up the stakes, and then took you down. It’s what they do.” He stopped. He’d told her this a hundred times, but sometimes she won big and so he knew she didn’t believe the game was rigged. She once won so much she’d bought a proper steam car and a dozen sets of driving clothes and rented a cottage on the far side of the city for six months. The car was long returned to pay debts, and the clothes were packed away for want of a vehicle to drive.
He shrugged into his vest and coat, there was no point in going out if you didn’t look proper. “I’ll talk to Mr. Beraghar.”
She leapt to her feet. “Oh, thank you.”
“Don’t thank me until we know what the job is.”
“I promise I won’t gamble again. This time I mean it. I promise.”
“I know.” Toten kissed her on the cheek, and she hugged him back fiercely, fingers digging into the back of his coat.
***
Toten walked three blocks to the corner of Grace and Mast where there was a pneumatic lift up to the upper tiers. From there, he could rent an airlift to Mr. Beraghar’s lofty apartment at the highest tier in the city of towers. How high could you build? No one knew. The engineers swore they could build higher, but Toten figured the question would only be settled on the day that one of those towers fell. Down here in the depths, the engineers had installed massive steel columns, latticework beams, and arches, often right through the existing shanties and old apartments.
At least they were kind enough not to raze the buildings. They just drove the piles right down through them and let the lower folks live with massive beams running out of their windows. Gotta duck on your way to the toilet. It had happened to one of Toten’s childhood friends, who swore he cracked his head on the beam in his living room twice a day. At least he got fresh eggs from the pigeons nesting in the flanges.
Toten crowded onto the lift with dozens of other low-dwellers, all dressed nicely on their way to jobs higher up. Waiters and stewards. The lift had no railing, just a wooden platform on tracks, but Toten figured if he got pushed off, he could leap for a window or a washing line passing by. After a lifetime of thieving, he automatically scanned for escape routes. He knew he did it, but it was second nature.
At the upper tier, he trudged off with other men. The rest continued on to the upper-upper tier. There was an upper-upper-upper tier above that, called the Triple-Ups, and Toten thought the people who named things ought to put more thought into it.
At the balloon-docking station, throat tight and stomach nauseous, he asked for Mr. Beraghar’s apartment. “Two hundredth level, St. Aupert’s,” he said to the old balloon man. St. Aupert’s was a private island of tall buildings unconnected to the pneumatics in the rest of the city.
“I can get you to the landing dock at one-seventy-five,” the stooped, minimally toothed old man said, pulling on his flatcap. “You’ll go through their security from there.”
“Of course.”
The old man checked a couple of dials on his tanks, unleashed fire, and the balloon lurched up on guidewires. Toten gripped the basket as buildings sped past. Twice, the old driver slowed at a crossing and switched wires, nimbly moving horizontally as well as vertically, passing other balloons of varying sizes. The last crossing, a wire of thousands of feet long between the building cluster at Horitz Street and the cluster at St. Aupert’s, was the demarcation between buildings connected to the city system, and St. Aupert’s that chose not to be. Thieves didn’t steal from St. Aupert’s.
“There she is,” the old man said, nodding to the soaring arches and carved wood of St. Aupert’s highest tower as it approached.
Toten nodded and looked away. He stared instead at the vast city sprawling below and around him, from the docks, to Senate Hill, to the tree-lined, low western suburbs. He knew it all intimately. The sun gleamed off the endless eastern ocean, but Toten had no interest in travel or ships. The city was all the world he needed.
He noted the cluster of black buildings to the southwest. Rumor was that some idiot had released a demon a hundred years ago, turning the old Mukrove towers dark. They said it had never been the same inside since, even with the demon banished—madness and whatnot. Toten didn’t believe any of it. Occultists lived there now, quite happy for its notoriety. Thieves didn’t generally rob Mukrove either, because of its reputation and because most Occulties didn’t have anything worth stealing.
And in between St. Aupert’s and Mukrove stood clusters and islands of buildings on a massive scale, two-hundred-plus stories high, basking in clear air and sunny skies. Most of the high buildings had promenades and sundecks where the great people of society lounged in opulence. Thieves were very interested in those buildings, and Toten figured he’d robbed them all at one point or another. He longed to bask up there with them in peace, just once.
The balloon came gently into the landing platform at St. Aupert’s on Level 175, and they were met by four gentlemen in long coats with guns holstered at their hips.
“Business?” said the largest of them, a bullnosed man with shaved head who had probably been a low-level cop once given the number of scars on his face.
“I need an audience with Mr. Beraghar,” Toten said. “He’s asked to see me. Toten Haday.”
Bullnose marched to an earpiece on a nearby wall while his three compatriots didn’t move away from staring.
“Lovely day, isn’t it?” Toten said to them. “You can see for miles.” He walked to the railing at the lip of the platform and his neck crawled. It wouldn’t be hard for them to heave him over.
It really did smell nice up here without the sewage and coal smoke.
“You’re in luck,” Bullnose called. “He’ll see you. Mr. Gentle will escort you up.”
Toten waved at the balloon man, who slipped his moorings and slid away down the wire, then joined the skinny man called Mr. Gentle on a very small lift that pressed them shoulder to shoulder. Toten didn’t care for that. At least the curved front was glass, so he could watch the city spread out around him. So many places to rob. Most buildings had different personalities and income levels, but fads came and went. Old stodgy clusters might spring to life again with a new generation of wealth looking to get away from under the eyes of their parents.
“Mr. Beraghar don’t normally accept guests,” Mr. Gentle said conversationally. “Are you important? Important people don’t usually come up the balloons.”
“I’m not important. It’s about a debt.”
“A lot of people owe Mr. Beraghar money. Like I said, he don’t normally accept guests.”
“I’m as in the dark as you are.”
“He’s a bit of a slob, he is.”
“What?”
“He’s a bit of terrible slob. He’ll probably meet you in the front room, that’s the only one that’s presentable. I had to go in once after he and his men had a row with one of the other lords, blood everywhere, I can tell you, and it was a pigsty.” Mr. Gentle shook his head, obviously more disturbed by the mess than the blood. “He could buy and sell every cleaning house in the city, but he doesn’t let people up very often. Food, plates, teacups, clothes. Everywhere.”
Toten grimaced. “Hopefully you won’t need to come collect my body.”
“See that I don’t. Don’t want to go in there again.”
The lift stopped and Toten stepped off on a private landing platform that fronted a grand, wooden door with iron bands. Three marble steps led up to the door, which was ridiculous as the apartment was on the level and didn’t need steps. Was the whole apartment raised up? What was under the floor then? He mulled the possibilities.
“Mind your tongue and see that I don’t have to come up,” Mr. Gentle reminded as he closed the glass door and dropped from view.
No point in waiting. Toten skipped up the steps and knocked with the ridiculously large and grotesque knocker. A well-dressed manservant answered.
“Wait here,” he said, bringing Toten into a vast entry vestibule that towered three stories high and supported many windows. Warm sunlight poured in across elegant portraits of couples in the clothes of different eras. They looked exactly like the portraits on the walls of old families—parents and grandparents and great-grandparents going back nauseatingly far—only Mr. Beraghar was the first wealthy man in his lineage. People from the lower levels didn’t have paintings of ancestors.
“Toten Haday, husband of Thierra Haday,” boomed a large voice as a large man with a large beard bustled through one of several doors at the rear of the vestibule. His bespoke gray suit looked ridiculously expensive to Toten’s practiced eye. A moment later, two bodyguards of even more impressive size followed through the door.
“Mr. Beraghar,” he said. “I’m terribly sorry about Thierra last night. She got in over her head and I’ve come up to offer my sincerest apologies.”
“Have you come to pay?”
“I have thirty thousand, and I can get the rest shortly. I’m good for it.”
“Thirty thousand is not a hundred thousand.”
“Yes, sir. My wife told me there might be a job I could do that would help resolve this problem.”
Mr. Beraghar eyed him and stroked his beard. The bodyguards said nothing. “You come well recommended,” he said. “I asked around, and it sounds like you could be more successful if you wanted to be. Your wife is holding you back.”
“Yes, sir, but what’s a man to do?”
“Then you’re a sentimental fool. Sooner or later her debts will catch up to her, you know. It’s inevitable. Ask my first two wives.” He smiled. “Well, it’s your choice. If she ends up dead in an alley some night, come talk to me about permanent employment.”
“Thank you.” Toten replied tightly. He didn’t want to think of Thierra dead. It wasn’t her fault, she had a compulsion, and he would always steal his way out of her troubles. Love was love. “What can I humbly help you with? My skills only go so far.”
“That’s not what I hear. Come with me.” Mr. Beraghar strode past and exited through the grand front door. One bodyguard followed, and one waited for Toten.
Toten joined Mr. Beraghar at the railing of the landing platform. The bodyguards stood too close and he kept very aware of where they stood.
“That’s the mark there. The Mukrove Towers.” Mr. Beraghar pointed at the dark towers in the distance.
Toten winced. “Thieves don’t go there.”
“Of course they don’t. It would be silly, right? There’s madness and ghosts in those apartments. You’re going anyway.”
Toten inhaled and exhaled. “What’s the job?” What could possibly be worth a hundred thousand in there?”
“There’s a necromancer on the 143rd Floor named Nekravé, which I’m certain is a made-up name. I’m not even sure if they’re a man or woman due to all the dark robes and theatrics, but they’ve got something interesting, and I’d like you to steal it.”
“What is the object of interest?”
“It’s a ring, which Nekravé wears on their middle finger. A clock ring. Nekravé is one of only a few living necromancers to have made one, and I want it.”
Toten turned to face the man fully. “You want me to go into the Mukrove Towers, get to the 143rd Floor, break into a necromancer’s apartment, and steal a ring?”
“Yes.”
“Is this a gold ring, studded with jewels?”
“It’s an iron ring, studded with gears. It looks uncomfortable.”
“How’s that worth anything at all?”
“That’s my business.”
“Well, does it do something? Or shoot something?”
“Again, my business.” Mr. Beraghar’s voice turned threatening.
“I need to know if it’ll hurt me when I pick it up.”
“The answer is no.”
Toten nodded.
Mr. Beraghar continued. “Nekravé goes out for tea every Wednesday at the Shrop Hanger Restaurant with several other necromancers, and they never wear the ring. I hear it’s considered impolite and boastful. That is your opportunity to get into their safe, and you’ll have over an hour.”
“There’ll be necromancer guards on the building.”
Mr. Beraghar waved dismissively. “Are you superstitious?”
“I’m not, but necromancer guards are uncannily dangerous. So I’ve heard.”
“You are a master thief. Act like it.”
“Fine. But what if I’m caught? What happens to Thierra?”
“Her debt will be forgiven if you succeed and only if you succeed, so don’t fail. If you get caught and give up my name, it’ll go even worse for her.”
Toten grimaced. He did not like Mr. Beraghar, but Thierra had put him in a difficult situation.
Mr. Beraghar threw an arm around his shoulders and squeezed. “What do you think, Mr. Haday? Can you do it?”
“Does the sun rise and set without fail? Does God love this, the greatest city in the world? Of course I can do it. What’s your timetable?”
“Two weeks.”
“That’s too tight.”
“Two weeks.”
Toten pictured Thierra sitting at the kitchen table. Necromancers terrified her, as did most anything occult, but Mr. Beraghar was a known threat. “Fine.”
Mr. Beraghar turned back to the view, arm still around Toten’s shoulders. “It is the greatest city in the world, isn’t it?”
***
Toten returned to his same, tired kitchen. This time, he sat at the table with his hands around a teacup while Thierra paced. She was pale, and her sharp eyes were dark. The dried flowers had lost more petals.
“Tell me what Mr. Beraghar wants you to do.”
“No.”
“Tell me!”
“It doesn’t matter. He wants something, he’s going to get it.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She stopped pacing and hugged herself, looking small. “This is all my fault.”
“Come here.” He slid his chair back and she sat on his lap, wrapping herself around him, burying her face in his neck. He felt the dampness of her tears against his throat. “They wanted me for a job, so they set you up. Mr. Beraghar has people who do that.” He rubbed her back gently. “We’ll get through this.”
“But what if something happens to you?”
“I’m the best there is. You believe that, don’t you?”
She nodded.
“Then we’ll get through this.”
“Just tell me the job.”
“I can’t. I know you won’t tell, but the walls have ears. Now jump off.” She slipped off his lap and he stood. “I have to plan, and that means I’m going to be late for the next bunch of nights. I don’t want you gambling. Right? No gambling…”
“I don’t have any money.”
“Let me hear you say it.”
“I won’t gamble. Happy?”
“Of course I’m happy. I’m always happy with you.”
She pulled him in for another tight hug and kissed him. “I can’t sit around doing nothing,” she said. “I’ll go back to my job at Marta’s.”
“That’s good. They need help.”
Sometime later, he stood on the third-floor balcony of a shuttered restaurant, looking across at the start of the Mukrove city block. Several shops were boarded up, but most were doing fine. Mukrove itself seemed a lively enough place, and people came and went in a continuous trickle, so the dark rumors weren’t keeping people away.
There were five towers in the complex, all the color of old ash, but only two of them soared to great heights. Who sunned themselves on the topmost decks? A number of midsized and lesser buildings filled the spaces in between, and a park meandered around them all. The park had been let grow wild, with vines and creepers coating the trees and lampposts and the lower stories of the buildings in an explosion of growth. It seemed almost planned for ambiance.
He looked toward the front door of the target tower. He’d want to get to know the cleaning staff and maintenance men. Maybe apply for a job. He’d watch Nekravé and get to know their patterns and personality.
Should he rent a balloon and drift across the buildings to get a higher view? As dangerous as necromancers were, they were still human with the usual failings, weaknesses, and vanities. He’d be fine. Thierra would be fine.
Two weeks was tight for a difficult job, though.
Mr. Beraghar must want the ring quickly for a reason. Toten would also have to scout out his new employer. There was no point in succeeding and then getting stabbed from behind after the job was done. He needed to know what the ring was for.
***
Two weeks later, just after three-thirty in the afternoon on Wednesday, Toten stumbled from a street-trolley into his favorite steak house, a long way from the Mukrove Towers. The iron clock ring lay cradled in his pocket, jabbing him with an edge.
Clouds of steam billowed from the kitchen, and the place smelled deliciously of cooking meat, but he was cold and couldn’t concentrate. Today, the smell and the sizzling, the calling cooks and waiters, had no impact.
He wiped sweat from his forehead. How could people live in those towers? There was truth to the madness that people whispered about. It hung thick. The walls and air were tainted with it, smelling of old lilacs. How did they stand it? He’d spent two weeks working there and he would never go back.
He’d get this ring to Mr. Beraghar and be done with it. He didn’t want a celebratory steak, he wanted a scalding bath, but steak was what he did every time. It was his good-luck habit.
An impeccably dressed waiter with a festive, yellow handkerchief in his breast pocket brought a rare steak and a potato. Toten began sawing at them with little attention. Then the sound and atmosphere in the room shifted. He’d spent his life listening to ambiance, and he looked up as a familiar, dark robed figure swung around him and pulled out the empty chair at his table. He backed away quickly as people openly stared. Nekravé’s hood swung loose and low, preventing him from getting a look at their face above a strong chin, vanishingly pale lips, and a hint of shiny copper.
He’d watched them long enough to recognize their limp.
“You’ve taken something important and made me cross this whole forsaken city chasing you,” Nekravé said in an obviously fake, obviously annoyed, sepulchral accent.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Toten said firmly, preparing to bolt for the door.
Nekravé peered down at Toten’s plate. “How can you eat that?” they said. “It looks revolting. I’m a vegetarian.”
Before he could reply, Nekravé raised a closed fist, opened it, and blew powder at his face.
Toten coughed violently, and his vision dimmed.
***
He awoke, slumped, strapped to a chair in a stuffy, dimly lit room. It took a few minutes to gather his thoughts. How much time had passed? The room held an unsettled atmosphere that he recognized like an itch at the back of his throat, and he shuddered at the smell of lilacs.
He finally shook off the drugs, and his eyes fastened on a collection of brass and wooden instruments hanging on a disturbingly red wall to his right. Sexual implements? Each hand-held device, with its leather bindings, clamps, pistons, and coiled, braided steam-hoses, had been lovingly polished and displayed to prominent effect. He jerked his eyes away in terror, looking around, but the small room held nothing else except his chair, the table before him, and two sputtering gas-lamps on the wall. Their uneven hiss the only sound.
He yanked at the straps that bound his arms, but they were too tight to reach the buckles. No worry—he’d be a poor thief if he couldn’t escape a binding. He had to hurry. Nekravé would return soon, that was certain.
With a twist of his hand, a small blade on a spring leapt through the fabric of his sleeve cuff. He began sawing at the thick strap, making quick progress, breathing rhythmically to keep from panicking. Got to keep control, or he was lost. That was a motto and a lifestyle. In moments, the strap was through, and he tugged at the buckle on his opposite wrist. Then to the shin-straps.
It may have only been thirty seconds, but that was too long. Got to go. He leapt to his feet and dodged around the table. Hesitating at the door, he listened, then pulled it open. Of course, Nekravé stood right there in the corridor, black-robed, reaching for the doorknob. Without hesitation, Toten charged into them, knocking them back, sprinting down the corridor for the stairs. Nekravé did not shout or say a word, but he felt them following. How close? How fast could a limping necromancer realistically run in robes?
He’d memorized the layout of the building, and each floor was the same. A corridor in a loop around the core, apartments outside the loop and elevators and stairs inside. The same burgundy patterned carpet lay on every floor, worn into tracks after so many years, and wall sconces cast flickering light from small gas flames. Time to take the stairs.
If Nekravé was smart, they’d take the elevator and try to catch him at the bottom of the building, so he’d run up instead.
He burst into the stairs, noting the floor number in tile on the wall — “143”—and ran up, keeping the slap of his shoes on the stair treads to a minimum. He had energy, he had breath, he could run a long distance. He didn’t hear the door of the stairwell crash open beneath him, so Nekravé must have chosen the elevator. Good. Now where to get off? He’d scouted the underused landing platform at 154 last week.
A short time later, his lungs heaving, he came to a stop on the landing at 154. His headache was worse, not better, but he tried to listen over his own gasping. There were no voices calling beyond the door, no one obviously waiting. If he could get to the cables that the balloons used, he could initiate a daring and stupid escape.
How had Nekravé followed him? Could they do it again?
He’d have to lay low for a while and find another way to appease Mr. Beraghar. He’d check in with the Thieves’ Guild and let them know about this whole cock-up. Nekravé might lodge a complaint.
He took the smooth, bronze doorknob out to the landing platform and pulled. Nekravé stood there outside, hand extended, and threw powder into his face.
***
Toten awoke, strapped to a chair in a brightly lit, stuffy room. His head was slumped forward, and he had a terrible headache. He didn’t recognize anything, but he felt like he’d been here before. What had happened?
His eyes fastened on the brass devices displayed on a disturbingly red wall to his right. Sexual implements? He had to get out of here! He jerked his eyes away and looked around, assessing, but the small room held nothing else but his chair, a table, and four sputtering gas-lamps.
He yanked at the straps that bound his arms, then twisted his wrist. Nothing happened. What? Looking down, he saw a fresh hole in his sleeve, but the blade was not there. Fear settled in his heart.
The door opened as he was unsuccessfully trying to get his hip-blade to flip out. Nekravé entered carrying a straight-backed, wooden chair. They placed it across from him and sank onto it while Toten made his expression deliberately calm.
As before, Nekravé’s face was only visible from the tip of their nose down to their chin.
“Please stop cutting through my leather,” they said in that same oddly fake sepulchral voice. “It’s expensive to replace.”
“What are you talking about? I haven’t cut anything.”
They shrugged lightly and held up their slender, pale hand, revealing the black, iron clock-ring with all its gears and angles on their middle finger. “This is the third time we’ve done this dance, though you won’t remember the first two. In both of those prior times you revealed a cleverly hidden blade and cut through my straps. I’ve relieved you of both of those blades. Please stop.”
“You drugged me and took my memory?”
“No drugs, except for the sleeping dust. This clock-ring has many attributes, one of which is to reverse time. You escaped, I knocked you out and reversed time, and here we begin again. Only I can remember this reversal, as I am the ring-holder. For you, this is the first time you’ve been here except that you’re lighter a pair of blades.”
Toten stared at the ring in consternation. Magic wasn’t real. He assumed Nekravé was lying, and she’d drugged him. “No wonder people want that ring,” he said half-jokingly. “Reversing time? The things a thief could do with that.”
“Yes, they could, I suppose. That’s not its purpose.”
Toten leaned back, feeling around for his ankle knife as fear began to set in. He looked at the array of devices hanging on the wall, then back into the impenetrable cowl. “What happens next?”
Nekravé started shaking slightly, and it took a moment for Toten to realize they were laughing. “Those aren’t for you, silly. Those are mine, and I hang them there for remembrance.”
“Yours?”
“We could take them down to play, if you like.”
“No.”
They reached up gently and lifted their cowl from their face to reveal horrific damage. Half of Nekravé’s face was metal. Toten twitched, then stilled his expression again.
Nekravé was a woman, at least he thought she was, thin to gauntness. Nearly the entire side of her head and face had been replaced with sculpted copper. Her hairline stopped abruptly above her right eyebrow, and half of that eyebrow was gone. Her temple, ear, and cheek had been replaced with polished metal; her right eye was a bronze artifice, turning in its socket, mechanical pupil dilating and adjusting; her neck tendons were delicate pistons that disappeared down into her black robes where the shoulder seemed to be artifice too. The flesh of her forehead and cheek were raw where they met metal.
“Do you like it?” she said, tilting her head.
“Whoever did the work is amazing,” he said, refusing to turn away. “Best I’ve seen.”
“I was an artist at the highest levels before the accident. People paid great sums to watch me perform, so I could afford the best artificers.”
Toten squinted, looking at her, and then at the wall of toys, comprehension dawning. “You were a courtesan?”
“I was an artist!” She half rose and then sat again. “I was an artist, until a steam cannister exploded. The damage was significant to my body and my brain. Wealth can only repair so much, but I survived. I can no longer perform, but I’ve acquired an alternate viewpoint on life and its excesses in the highest towers.”
“That’s when you became a necromancer?”
She nodded, the pistons in her neck extending and retracting noiselessly. There was gold inlay to complete her truncated eyebrow, and delicate filigree to recreate the look of a jawbone.
“I’m forever trapped between life and death,” she said, “so why not worship at its altar?”
Toten shifted, uncomfortable with her blasphemy. “What do you want of me?” First Mr. Beraghar, now this mad necromancer. He was not used to being blackmailed, but he would listen to her demands.
“I could kill you,” she said. Her fake accent had dropped, and she had a typical educated woman’s accent of the north quadrant. “The guild won’t protect you. You stole outside of sanction, and worse—you got caught.”
“Or?” Toten prompted, waiting.
“I want you to explore a new piece of the necromantic realm while I sit here in safety.”
“Necromantic realm?”
“You’ve never heard of it?”
“I make a point of not prying into necromancer business.”
“Until now, that is? At its simplest, it is a parallel world of darkness and shadows. There are places of great value in it, at least to necromancers. There are libraries left by the ancient ones, tombs of powerful demons, and creatures made of darkness.”
“Sounds lovely.” It sounded like a bad hallucination. “So I just scout out the place, and then I can go?”
“Of course. I’ll have no more need of you. You’ve already told me Mr. Beraghar is your employer.”
Toten jerked forward. “I never told you that.”
“In one of the other two times you were here, when I was torturing you on this table, you sang like a bird.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care.”
Toten looked around for any chance of escape. The gas lamps hissed, the tools on the wall looked even more frightening now, and the atmosphere of the room weighed on him. He didn’t want to be drugged and at her mercy.
“What do I have to do if I say yes?”
“Oh good,” she said, half smiling with the human side of her face. “I knew you’d be reasonable.”
“What do I do?”
“I’ve developed a new door into the necromantic realm, one that leads much higher up in the scale if I’m right.”
“What does that mean?”
“It doesn’t matter, I just need you to go in and come back and tell me what you saw. I think you’ll be dizzyingly high, far away from all existing doors. A new place entirely. A new zone on the map.” She clasped her hands together excitedly. “I could win an award at the annual banquet.”
“Just go in, come back, and tell you what I saw?” He’d play along and pretend he saw something. The explosion had obviously damaged her brain.
“Yes.”
“And what are the odds of my head getting bitten off by one of those beasts you mentioned?”
“High. But the odds of you screaming to death on this table are also high.”
“So, I don’t have a choice.”
“Of course you have a choice. And if you go in, whether you survive or not, I’ll make sure your wife’s debt is settled. Is that fair?”
Despite his fear of what was about to happen, Toten felt a flush of relief. “Fair. Where’s this door then? What do I need to smoke or inhale? Is there prep work?”
“Not like that.” She held up the clock-ring again. “This is the door, and it’s far more complex than the older, existing rings, I can tell you that. I’m quite proud.”
“That’s a door?” he said doubtfully. Maybe she’d already introduced some sort of gas into the room to make him hallucinate. Was it already too late?
Nekravé nodded eagerly. “We have dozens of rings like this—simple and more limited in their function, and they’re all doors.” She pointed to the largest gear poking out from the side, its fine teeth curving back into the black face of the ring. “This is the wheel of hours. It was how I reversed time to catch you. Below it are additional gears and wheels—minutes and seconds, obviously. In between those are smaller and smaller wheels. They allow you to slip between minutes, cut between seconds. The spaces that get forgotten. You know about those spaces, don’t you? You live in those spaces. Places where no one sees or hears. A lot of people live in those spaces and the city forgets them. That’s as true for your world as it is for mine.”
“There are hiding spaces between seconds?” He wasn’t following her logic.
“This ring is special because of the quantity and quality of the gears. I can cut the seconds finer, slipping into smaller spaces. I will go places no one has ever gone.”
“You mean I’ll go.”
“It’s a noble sacrifice. There are necromancers whom we call Lamplighters. They find safe paths through the darkness. I would be a Lamplighter to my people, but it doesn’t do anyone any good if I’m killed while doing it. So, it’s a time-honored practice to use proxies for our explorations. Others have gone before you, others will follow—some are successful, and some are not.
“Now what do you say?” She rustled her robes and looked expectant. “Are you going to do this, or do I begin dissecting you? I need a willing participant.”
“Are you a monster?”
“I’m an artist.”
He stared into her human eye for a long moment, and she didn’t blink. She was so utterly convinced of this that he began to get nervous. “Where will I be when I go through the door? I won’t go without some idea of what to expect.” If he was going to make up visions for her, he needed to know what she expected him to see.
“I’ll describe it in terms you can understand but know that it isn’t like this at all. These are approximations. You’ll see darkness at first, and the air will be hot and dry. You’ll be standing on gritty soil, with vague impressions of bushes and trees around you.” Nekravé closed her human eye. Her open, bronze eye continued to turn in its mechanical socket. “It’s night with no moon, and the stars are not our constellations. Your eyes will adjust enough to see the ruins of houses scattered around you. That seems to be typical for the city.”
She was taking this seriously. He had an itch between his shoulder blades. “How big are the houses? How close together?”
She opened her eye. “One or two stories, wood-framed, spaced apart. It doesn’t matter, you can’t explore them. There are eyes on you from every window. Not long after, the dogs will come.” Her gaze was far away. “They’re not dogs, of course, but how else do you describe the indescribable except with familiar names.”
Toten fought laughter at her naivete and gullibility. “Am I looking for anything specific?”
“Light. You’re looking for one of the rare houses that are lit brilliantly. There are a few in town, and the town is vast. They’re library houses. You can’t avoid the dogs, but they don’t like the light. If you can get to one of those houses, you’ll be safe.” She waved her hand with the iron ring. “Successful rings open doors close to those houses and give us safe access, unsuccessful ones lead to darkness and therefore death.”
“I hope your ring works.”
“It will.” She kissed the ring and held it up. “There’s a mountain—you can see it by the hollow lack of stars and a couple of bright houses scattered across it. There’s a single beacon at its peak. That is the house we’re aiming for.” She shivered.
“Has anyone gone up there before?”
“How could they? They don’t have my ring.” She stood. “Time to go.”
“Now?” He jerked against the straps.
She came around the table, tugged off the ring, and slid it onto his finger. She leaned over and began twisting wheels and gears. “Have you ever left the city before?”
“No, why would I?”
“You’re in for a treat. I’ve put thirty seconds on the timer.” She stood, and he noticed that the arm on her damaged side seemed shorter. “That’s this button here.” She pointed to a tiny button on the ring’s edge.
“Thirty seconds isn’t much time.”
“It’s too much time in there. Remember, you’re cutting through the seconds, elongating them. The dogs will come, so start running immediately. Zig and zag, don’t run in a straight line. I hope you return.”
He stared at the rotating gears in the ring, transfixed. He could hear it ticking, counting the seconds. Three…four…five…
“Don’t steal anything,” she called, stepping to the wall. “Also, ignore the voices and don’t read the books. Both can drive you mad if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Voices?”
The room suddenly began to tremble with a nauseating hum, and the gas lamps dimmed. …Seven…eight…nine… Toten yanked at the straps again, hurting himself.
“Thirty seconds—but the seconds are bigger there. Good luck.”
The room vanished.
***
Toten snapped open his eyes and it was, as described, very dark. He was standing, no longer bound, and the air was thick, hot, and prickly, and it stank of mildew. Where was he? He spun, disoriented, his boots scraping on sand. The bushes she’d spoken of moved unnaturally in his peripheral vision. Some were as big as trees, restlessly contorting. He couldn’t focus his eyes on them. A half-collapsed house loomed beyond them in the darkness and an intense feeling of being watched grew. There were voices at the edge of hearing. This couldn’t be real. He was hallucinating. Turning his head, he found the double-gabled mansion that Nekravé wanted, the only source of light in this place. It was up a steep hill. It was not close.
Fear clawed at him, but he had to do this for Thierra. Damn Nekravé.
He heard a noise and dove and rolled without hesitation and came up running at a sprint, boots chewing into the sandy ground. He dodged right and curved back left, terror driving his legs as hard as they’d ever gone.
Darkness leapt at him, and he felt searing pain across his back. He stumbled but kept running. Light meant safety! Nekravé had said so.
How far uphill? A hundred and fifty feet? They were right on him, the dogs with snapping jaws, when he burst across the last gap, hurtling up the steps onto the front porch, slamming into the front wall of the house between a window and the door. He spun to face them, but there was nothing there—just barren soil sloping steeply away. He hesitantly returned to the top of the steps, panting and sweating in the heat. The light only reached so far, and he saw great bodies of darkness pacing beyond the circle of light, glaring with wolfish eyes.
His presence was resented.
“This isn’t real,” he said, begging himself to believe it. “Come on, hold yourself together. She drugged me. Wait it out, it’ll end soon.” The whispering voices swelled and fell, the susurrus of a crowd, and if he listened hard, he could almost understand them.
He gingerly pulled his coat off and stuck his hand through the slashes in the back then tossed it over the porch railing. Next, he peeled off his vest. It was damp with blood. Probing with his fingers, he didn’t think the cuts were that deep. He’d survived worse. He put the vest back on and buttoned it, wincing.
“You’re too slow,” he yelled out, but his voice fell feebly in the heavy air. “I’m not a paunchy necromancer in flouncy robes.” He felt their surge of anger and a deep growl arose from the darkness farther down the hill. A hundred throats took it up, and the furious rumble moved slowly from left to right.
Trembling, he lifted the clock-ring to the light, inhaling a shaky breath. Was it ticking? It wasn’t ticking, and he felt cold panic despite the heat. Suddenly, it clicked, the gear moving once, and then it stopped again. He shook it next to his ear. What had she said about seconds lasting longer? Damn her. How long was a second? He counted almost to seventy before the clock ticked again. It was still moving, and he felt a rush of relief.
He stared out at the pacing, growling dogs. It was real. It felt too real. Necromancers were fools to come here.
He lowered the ring and took his bearings, struggling to ignore the noise and smell that were burrowing into his head. The porch was limned in warped and peeling boards, once white, but it was otherwise empty of rocking chairs and potted plants. It disappeared around the far corner of the house into darkness.
She said he shouldn’t steal here. Screw that. There were libraries in these houses, but was there anything actually worth taking?
Glancing out one last time, he couldn’t help himself, he noted the pinpricks of light far below him. The other beacon houses down on the plain. The strange constellations above and the lights below might have been beautiful in another place.
He felt blood on his back, hot on his spine.
Turning, he pushed through the front door into an oddly barren foyer. Dark wainscotting wrapped the lower walls, and plaster peeled above in disturbing patterns. Everything blazed with light, like the porch. It came from everywhere and nowhere.
He closed the front door, muting the relentless growling, but now he heard scratching in the walls instead. Mice?
There were three closed doors across the foyer from him and a narrow stair going up. Something wet and nasty had been dragged down the stairs, leaving a thick, rancid smear. Toten tore his eyes away.
Keep moving. Keep moving.
The clock-ring ticked again.
The doorknobs of the three interior doors were plain brass, and he gripped one gingerly with his fingertips, heart thumping. The door opened into a brightly lit, front drawing room with blackened windows out to darkness.
The air in the room was hot to breathe, and he could feel the rising and falling growl through the walls, but nothing moved here. He stepped across the threshold.
There were bookshelves, packed with huge leather tomes with no titles on their spines, but what captured his attention were two tables, about six feet to a side. Each supported an elaborate model of a village. Bright lanterns on tracks hung from the crumbling, blue ceiling above each.
He edged slowly up to the first table. It held amazing detail at such a tiny scale. There was a cluster of maybe fifty wattle-and-daub huts, each about as tall as his first knuckle, all slightly different, gathered around the banks of a muddy river. He’d seen drawings of places like these in grade school. There were gardens in miniature behind each hut, and broader fields beyond. It looked so realistic that the river could have been flowing. It even looked like there were smudges of smoke rising above the huts. He leaned forward. Were the people and animals moving? He gasped and reared back, then leaned forward again. They were! But at such a tiny scale that they were moving incredibly slowly. The animatronics must have been assembled with a jeweler’s loop; they were only half as big as his pinky nail.
Why were they built, and why here?
He turned to the second table, which held a town on the low slopes of a fake, rocky mountain, whose sheer rise ended abruptly about three feet above the table. There was a crystal blue lake in front of the village, and vibrant, green meadows. Squinting, he could see the tiny animatronic people and animals and carts moving here too. Circling the table, he studied the wooden struts and plaster that held up the back of the hollow mountain. From the front, the illusion was complete. Beneath the table, there was a small lamp on tracks. The moon? Looking up, he realized that the brighter sun-lantern was moving slowly along the ceiling track.
There was nothing worth stealing here, and the stifling heat was getting to him. The scratching in the walls seemed louder and his back throbbed. The ring ticked.
Wiping his face with a handkerchief, he hurried back to the foyer and hesitantly opened the second door. A dim, narrow hallway led down to the rear of the house. There had been pictures on the stained wallpaper once, he could see the pale squares where they had hung, and there was a yellow ball on the floor, halfway down.
He traversed the corridor as quickly and as quietly as he could, neck crawling. An empty kitchen with blackened windows lay on the right. There were smeared stains across every countertop and an empty dog crate on the floor. He wasn’t about to open the cabinets or larder. The other room off the corridor had probably been a dining room. Three tables with models took up the space where the dining table would have stood. The wooden buildings in the models were taller here and built much closer together. These were large towns, with narrow lanes and tenement buildings, and a few grandiose governmental buildings at the center. One had a bustling market wrapped around a fountain, with hundreds of tiny people shopping. Another had progressed beyond donkey carts into steam cars and trolleys.
He shook his head. It made no sense.
The corridor was just as oppressive and nerve-racking the second time, so that he practically ran back to the foyer.
The third door off the foyer led to the other front room. Here, there were five smaller tables crammed together. An island village dotted with strange trees caught his attention. He’d read about tropical islands. Boards had been nailed around the edges of the table to hold water, and when he dabbed in his finger, it came away wet. A fan powered by some unknown mechanism sat on a nearby stool and blew rippling waves across the tiny ocean.
Scanning across the ever-present bookshelves and black windows, he thought he saw movement beyond the glass, so he returned to the foyer again and confronted the stairs. Did he really want to go up? The stairs felt different somehow, like a threshold he shouldn’t cross. The ring had ticked another three or four times, he could just wait it out here, right? The scratching in the walls grew louder, following him.
But he’d never backed down before, so using all his skill to keep silent on the creaky steps, he climbed and kept his feet clear of the awful smear. That same red-brown stain continued down the corridor above and turned into the rear bedroom. He wouldn’t follow it further.
The front bedroom on his right held another model, he could see it from where he stood, but it didn’t look like any city he’d ever seen. Soaring buildings of metal and glass stretched nearly to the ceiling. Before he could investigate, he froze at the sound of snoring in the front bedroom on the left.
Peeking in, he saw with shock an old man, beard long and gray and draped down his chest, sleeping in a chair. Someone lived in this terrible place? He wore workman’s coveralls and was coated in sawdust. A table stood beside him, piled with knives and tools, bags of plaster, wood, wire, and jars of paint. There were other, larger tools hanging on the wall. A huge city was under construction to his right, and Toten was startled by its size. The table took up most of the room, with buildings rising six feet high and more. These towers rivaled the bedroom opposite, but they were made up of tiny bits of wood and iron rather than smooth metal.
His eyes alighted on boots with fat, gold buckles near the man’s feet. Finally! Here was something to steal. He wouldn’t think or ask himself why or how or even what this man was until later.
Sliding forward, breathing in shallow, smooth breaths, he listened to the snoring with his whole body. The scratching was above his head now, probably in the attic.
Under the harsh, overhead lamp, the old man’s face was as pale and hard as marble, heavily lined. His eyebrows rose like wild spiders, delicately sprinkled with sawdust.
Toten crouched to take the boots, and looked up at the city’s towers. He froze at this new perspective, recognizing everything. The Bayat Towers, the Frist Towers, the Huyagalla Towers. There was St. Aupert’s where Mr. Beraghar lived, modelled in elaborate detail. There was his private landing platform. Toten located the Mukrove Towers, painted darker gray with splotches of black. Tiny hydraulic lifts with people on them rose from the depths to the heights. Little balloons moved on suspended wires.
Why was this man building a copy of his city? Toten stood in wonder and leaned over the model-in-progress. He knew the city, and he knew the model just as intimately. Every avenue, alley, and restaurant was here in detail. The longer he looked, the more uncanny it became until he couldn’t deny that this actually was his city. How? He felt faint. Tiny crowds crossed at street corners while trams came and went. Cars filled the boulevards. An aeroplane circled then swooped down for a landing on the strip at the city’s edge, while commuter trains trundled back and forth on elevated tracks.
He suddenly realized the snoring had stopped and he spun around. The old man’s eyes were open, and Toten trembled. They were black from edge to edge, deep and swirling with stars. Eyes capable of swallowing worlds. A furrow grew along his stony forehead.
“Ha’baktha a La?” The man said in a low growl, sitting up, fury transforming his face. “Agakta lue olak!”
Toten snatched the first knife his hand came to on the table and held it forward. It was covered in glue and paint. He backed up. “Are you God? Are we toys?” Those eyes threatened to devour him. “The other cities and the island? Are they real too?”
“Bak,” the old man rumbled, standing and yanking a massive carving blade off a hook on the wall.
Toten glanced once at the boots with gold buckles, then bolted, hurtling down the stairs, still avoiding every creaky board by instinct. The old man followed with a roar, careening off walls, bellowing unintelligibly.
Toten fumbled with the front door, yanked it open barely in time, and threw himself across the porch, almost tripping down the stairs. The growling of the dogs swelled into a howl when he emerged, and he slid to a stop on the dead, sandy soil, still holding the useless knife out in front of him. The old man crashed through the front door behind him and stopped on the porch, carving blade in his clenched hand.
The clock-ring ticked again —Toten felt it.
“Arraghava,” the old man shouted into the night, looking over Toten’s head, and the dogs roared back, driven to a frenzy. Just beyond the light, darkness roiled.
Toten dropped into a crouch against the noise, barely able to fight the urge to run … run … run anywhere. He gripped the knife so hard his hand cramped.
The old man shouted again, loud above the cacophony, and light flared from his eyes, billowing out from the house, licking the underside of sparse clouds like flame. The dogs, horrid mockeries of skinless beasts, fled before it, scrambling downhill and squirming under the porches of derelict houses. Vanishing. The voices paused.
Toten stood in awe, knees popping. He could see all now. The abandoned and haunted town sprawled down the mountain below him and across the plains like a shapeless stain with no end. But that wasn’t what grabbed his attention. Giant monsters walked out there.
God-Beasts a thousand feet tall, as tall as the mountain, ambled ponderously on four legs or six. Their indifferent steps crushed houses in swaths hundreds of feet long. They were hairless, the color of livid pus, and their nightmare-faces, level with the ground where he stood, were part-human and part-insect. Heads swung back and forth slowly, half lidded eyes searching. Mandibles chewed. Below them, the lanes and alleys of the town rippled and churned with the motion of—for lack of a better word -dogs.
The old man closed his eyes and darkness dropped, leaving Toten in his small ring of light, blinking. He remained still, hoping his insignificance would save him as the susurrus of voices rose again. The old man strode back inside and slammed the door.
The gear of seconds ticked.
Trembling, he lifted the clock-ring and gently clicked the gear of hours back four ticks with his fingernail.
***
Toten took a seat at his favorite steak house, a fresh bandage on his back. Clouds of steam billowed from the kitchen, and the place smelled wonderful. He felt cold and his hands still shook.
The clock-ring was nestled in his vest pocket where he’d shoved it when he returned, and the knife was wrapped in a newspaper at his hip. His coat was lost, still draped over the railing of the porch back at that house, so he was underdressed for the room. If he’d calculated correctly when turning the hour gear, he had taken himself back to just after his original theft.
A waiter with a red pocket handkerchief in his breast pocket brought steak and a potato, and Toten began sawing at the steak, waiting. The sudden shift in atmosphere announced that Nekravé had arrived. He looked up as the dark robed figure pulled out the empty chair at his table, noting the slight hesitation of her copper and bronze parts.
“You’ve taken something important from me and made me cross this whole forsaken city chasing you,” Nekravé said in her fake, sepulchral accent, just like before.
People were staring, and Toten didn’t care.
He pulled a clunky iron ring out of his pants pocket, a replica he’d made a week ago, and held it up between his thumb and finger. “You told me that if this didn’t work, it was useless. Well, it didn’t put me at the house so it must be useless. It’s mine now. I’m keeping it.”
Nekravé’s arrogance evaporated, and she shoved back the hood from her face. Her flesh eye was wide, the bronze eye was fixed on the ring. “What?” she said in a strong northeast quadrant, lower-class accent.
“The house was too far away. I barely outran the dogs.”
“You went?” she said excitedly. “You did, I see it in your eyes, and then you shifted hours back to meet me here. Of course you did. How did you outrun the dogs?”
“A lifetime of outrunning things that mean me harm.” He shivered and looked at the chatting lunch-goers. Were they all automatons? Nekravé was, by her own choice, but now that his eyes were opened, he could see the artifice binding everyone together. Rubber bands and stuffing and pistons for beating hearts. Toys of a monstrous god.
“What’s inside the bright houses?” he said.
“Libraries. Books. Some we can read, some we don’t dare.”
“What else?”
“Nothing, why?”
So there weren’t models of worlds in every house? Was this the only such house? “What does ‘Arraghava’ mean?”
She looked at him quizzically. “It means ‘Not yet’. Where did you read that.”
He shrugged.
“Oh, you have some stories to tell, don’t you? Give me the ring.”
“It didn’t work.”
“I’m not going to allow it out among you thieves, turning back hours. Give it back and tell me everything you saw. I’ll let you live.”
Toten drew the paint-spattered knife out of the newspaper, set the fake ring on the table, and slammed the butt of the knife down on it. It cracked and gears tumbled out. He hadn’t expected it to be that easy. “There.” He returned the knife to its newspaper. “It’s yours.”
Nekravé looked down at it in horror. “You broke it,” she said in a small voice, and Toten knew that she couldn’t make another. She’d intended to modify it to try again.
She jerked her closed fist up from beneath the table. He was ready. When she opened her hand and prepared to blow powder in his face, he was already blowing back. She looked startled as the blue dust hit her.
“We did this before, didn’t we?” she slurred with the working half of her mouth. Her bronze eye in its mechanical socket dropped down with a click. Her shoulder slumped. She toppled forward onto the table.
He drew a handkerchief out of his breast pocket and swept the pieces of the ring into it. Two waiters hurried over.
“She’ll be fine,” he said. “Sleeping powder. She’ll be up again in no time.”
He tossed a generous sum of money on the table beside his uneaten meal and left the restaurant. The true ring was still hidden in his vest pocket.
Up above, the sun shone. He squinted, raising his hand to shield his eyes, and saw the wires and the track of the lantern crossing the sky. Turning his head, he could see the glue and bits of cut balsam that made up the buildings. He felt like he’d always seen this, only he hadn’t noticed.
Nothing was real. This city was a model on a table, at the whim of an old Maker in a world of absolute nightmares.
Did the necromancers know? No, he didn’t think so. Nekravé seemed to only care about the books, she knew nothing of what moved about her in the darkness.
He took the knife from the newspaper as he approached a trash can and tossed it in. To his surprise, it speared cleanly through and out the other side of the can like it was paper and stuck in the brick walkway almost to the hilt.
Staring at it, then looking around to see if anyone was watching, he snatched it up by the paint-spattered handle and gently folded the knife back into his newspaper. The Maker’s knife could cut through the world.
***
He waited on Mr. Beraghar’s lofty landing platform, holding his newspaper, looking out. He felt like he could see forever. How far did the model go? People lived out there on the edges of the city, so what did they see when they looked out?
He’d hidden weapons around the platform a week ago in anticipation of this moment, but now he didn’t care. They were props in a play.
“Toten,” Mr. Beraghar called, trotting down the faux front steps with his security guards in tow. “Did it go well? Did you see any ghosts?”
“It went fine,” he replied in a flat voice, still staring out. Wind blew across his face from some giant fan on a nearby table.
“And the necromancer? You didn’t tell my name, did you?”
“Nekravé is face down in a restaurant right now and will undoubtedly be coming after me as soon as she wakes.”
“I can hide you.”
“You can’t.” Toten turned to face the jovial, bearded man. “Tell me something, have you ever left the city?”
“There’s no need to.” He threw his hands wide. “Everything’s here. Why?”
“I don’t know anyone who’s left the city. Not a single person. What if we can’t?”
“What’s this about?” Mr. Beraghar said, his smile fading.
“I’d like to go far away.”
“Hah, travel, eh? Avoid the necromancers? Can’t say as I’ll join you. I’ve always thought of foreigners as barbaric and uncivilized.”
Toten laughed sadly. “That’s what I always thought too.”
“The ring.” Mr. Beraghar held out his hand.
Toten placed the handkerchief in his palm, barely making eye contact.
“What’s this.”
“It was damaged.”
“Damaged?!” Mr. Beraghar clawed open the handkerchief and poured the pieces into his hand. His face slowly twisted in anger. “What happened?”
“Necromancer magic.”
“You don’t believe in magic!”
“Yet it’s the truth.”
“Your wife’s debt is not canceled.” He turned to his security guards. “Hang him from the railing and find me another thief. We’ll get another ring.”
They approached. Toten gently lifted the knife from its newspaper sheath, careful of the blade’s edge. They glanced at it and smirked, but he’d already done this twice today, going back in time with the ring to do it again. Do it better.
The man on the right lunged, surprisingly quick. Toten could see the powerful pistons in his legs and arms working in unison. He sidestepped and slashed. Stuffing split along the man’s midsection, cut wires spilled out, and he coughed a small waterfall of gears. Toten knew that wasn’t what everyone else saw.
The second man, despite his partner’s swift fall, was already stepping in to attack, swinging a metal bar. Toten blocked with the knife, and the man’s expression turned to surprise as the blade passed through the bar like butter, sending most of it tumbling away. Toten continued his motion and stabbed into the little gearbox at the center of the man’s chest.
Mr. Beraghar stood frozen for a moment, then turned and fled into his house. Toten followed up the steps and tugged at the massive door. It was heavy and it was locked, so he cut a new door through it with the knife and walked inside.
***
Toten returned home, exhausted. It was getting on toward dinner time, and Thierra was cooking. Waiting for him. She turned as he opened the door, all her whirring parts now visible to his eyes now, and ran and threw herself into his arms.
“You did it?” she cried, hugging him tightly.
“I did it.”
“And Mr. Beraghar has forgiven the debt?”
“We talked for a while, and Mr. Beraghar was most gracious. He forgives everything but he says you’re not to gamble in his halls anymore.” Toten was glad that Mr. Beraghar was a coward as heart. He hadn’t had to hurt him.
Thierra pulled back, looking at him. He could see her, the old her, if he didn’t look too hard.
“What was the job?” she asked. “Tell me. Are we in danger from the Baron?”
He stepped around her and pulled a bottle of expensive liqueur from a high shelf. His pour was generous. She waited.
Leaning back against the counter, he smiled at her. “It has nothing to do with the Baron, but I can’t tell you anything else. I probably never can.”
She looked frustrated, but he was firm. He’d have to deal with Nekravé and the Necromancer’s Guild eventually, but that wouldn’t be much of a problem. He’d buy them off with stories of the necromantic realm.
It didn’t matter. Nothing really mattered, did it? He had the clock-ring and the knife, and he could steal anything, anywhere, at any time.
He pulled her into another hug and closed his eyes against his new vision. Tears gathered. Love was what mattered.
Something scratched inside the walls.