009

“Touch my treasure and you’ll forfeit that hand.”

Nanesh was squatting over an unfurled bedroll cluttered with odd items. He’d refashioned his poncho of reptile hides into a cloak, tied at his throat with a length of catgut suture. The cloak rippled colorfully as his hands worked beneath it, no doubt reaching for a hidden blade or a poisoned dart.

“I didn’t touch a damn thing,” Frank said, eyeing Nanesh warily. “But I meant what I said. That key belongs to me.”

They had ridden for two hours, far enough from the valley that an ambush of Copper Men seemed unlikely. They’d stopped to rest and water Grizsix at a hidden pool beneath a yellow sandstone bluff. The pool was fed by a cascade from above, more spill than stream, and cold as iron. Sun-scorched boulders ringed its edges, some slick with moss, others etched with old claw marks. Delicate insects with long wings and long legs skimmed its surface. And on a shaded bank nearby, the twins laid out their treasures on the unfurled bedroll, the better to appraise each piece.

After the battle in the clearing, they’d picked clean the bodies of the raiders, moving with the same furtive speed and reverence for the dead as cockroaches. Frank had argued for them to leave immediately, just hop on Grizsix and tear ass out of the valley. But the twins were scavengers at heart. It was rare to come across an entire battlefield that hadn’t yet been looted, and they weren’t going to let this opportunity pass.

Armor and weapons were of little use to them, given their odd proportions, but they had a keen eye for small items, any little thing that glinted or gleamed. They came away with twelve silver coins, three water skins (two filled with water, one filled with wine), a fish leather belt, a net, a bronze hunting knife, a thong necklace with an animal tooth charm, two bedrolls, two pairs of well-oiled sandals, a jar of birdlime, several pounds of smoked meat, a handful of sharp flint, and Frank’s brass key.

“The big one should know I don’t make threats,” Nanesh said, his left eye swollen shut from Frank’s recent headbutt. “I keeps my word. And I swear you won’t get another thing from me.”

Frank cared little for the twin’s spoils. He’d claimed half the silver coins – he’d need money in Uqmai, after all, and half seemed fair – under fierce protest from Nanesh. Otherwise, he’d salvaged things the twins had no use for: a bronze dagger, a pair of short javelins, a hooded cloak the color of burnt orange, and the horsehair helm and black spear of Carnithrax’s flag bearer. It wasn’t quite the arsenal Sgt. Skulltaker was used to (what he wouldn’t give for a handgun, or even a couple grenades) but it would even the odds a bit in his next fight.

According to Thune, he was entitled to much more, everything really, since he was the one who killed the Copper Men. To prove this point, Thune delivered a long-winded treatise on the rights of battlefield privilege, citing iron-clad precedents from half a dozen city-states. None of it mattered though. Out here in the wilds, the only law was strength, and the only justice was violence. Nanesh knew it, and Frank was learning quickly.

To make peace, and secure a ride to Uqmai, a trek which would have taken three days on foot but only one on Grizsax, Frank had agreed to relinquish his claim to everything but the coins. Nanesh seemed satisfied with this and everyone shook on it, everyone with hands anyway.

Then he spotted the key.

It was made of antique brass, no longer than a woman’s finger, its blade worn thin from centuries of handling. Seeing it made his head swim, producing the most profound sense of déjà vu. He had never owned such a key – had never even seen such a key – but he knew this one belonged to him.

“I didn’t know what I was agreeing to.” Frank stepped toward the bedroll but checked himself when he heard Grizsix hiss. The old girl crawled up behind the twins, her ridge of unblinking eyes fixed on Frank and her tails raised defensively. “Besides, this ain’t loot. It belongs to me.”

“Please. Be reasonable everybody.” Manesh’s eye stalks turned a sickly green.

Suddenly Frank tasted something rank and bitter in the back of his throat. It was apprehension, he realized. Manesh was unconsciously broadcasting his worry. Frank's psychic synesthesia was growing sharper, it seemed, an interesting development except that the emotions he’d sampled so far (fear, anxiety) were highly unpleasant.

“No,” Nanesh said flatly. “The big one said we keeps what we find. So we keeps the key.”

“It’s not yours to keep. It shouldn’t have even been part of the deal.”

“What dost this key mean to thee?” Thune asked, dangling at Frank’s belt.

“I don’t know. I just need it back.” The sight of the key gnawed at Frank with a quiet compulsion. Seeing it made him want to hold it, and not being able to hold it pained him greatly. Yet he couldn’t look away. It was like running his tongue along a cracked tooth, impossible to justify, impossible to stop.

“Why does the big one need it?” Nanesh said. “What’s it open? A box of treasure, I’ll bet.”

“I don’t remember,” Frank said, his voice faraway and searching, like someone trying to give directions to a place they’d never been.

“What use is the key if you don’t remember what it opens?”

“It’s important.”

“Important how?”

“I don’t know,” Frank shouted, his voice echoing loudly off the bluff, scattering insects and small critters. “I just do.”

“It seems these instincts are not wholly thine own,” Thune said. “Tread carefully, Frank Farrell.”

Frank knew Thune was concerned for him. He’d put off further discussion of the Allflesh until they could be alone, but his warning still lingered ominously, like the smell of smoke after a house fire. Now, Frank was acting odd. Thune probably blamed the Allflesh, but Frank didn’t care about that. He just wanted his key.

“If it’s so important to the big one, then how’d it end up on a Copper Man’s corpse?”

“I must’ve lost it somewhere.” A scrap of memory fluttered in the corner of his mind, twirling in the void like a wind-blown newspaper. It was a half-forgotten dream. And like all such dreams, he felt it more than he actually remembered it.

In the dream, he was belly-down and squeezing through a narrow tunnel. He wouldn’t fit as he was now; his body was too big. But in the logic of dreams, he was simultaneously himself and not himself, crawling and watching someone else crawl. He – the man in the tunnel – was lithe and nimble, wiry instead of brawny, pale-skinned instead of grey-skinned, with eyes like polished brass.

Hundreds of wriggling fingers poked through the earthen walls of the tunnel, pinching and prodding as he crawled. They were the fingers of corpses, black and cold and bloated, reaching out to steal his warm life. It was there he must have lost the key, on the tip of a thieving digit. It only made sense.

And yet, he’d never been to such a place. It certainly recalled the horrors of the Temple of Blasphemous Flesh. But everything about his escape from that hellish pit was still fresh in his mind, often painfully detailed, and he’d never come across this tunnel. So why did he remember it?

How could he remember it?

“So the big one don’t know what the key opens? And he don’t know how it got here? But he knows it’s his?” Nanesh’s cloak billowed again, flashing red and green and yellow, shiny and slick. For an instant, his hand was visible under the wrap, gripping a fire-hardened spike of bone. “He must think Nanesh is a fool.”

“Calm, brother,” Manesh said. “There’s a time for fighting and a time for talking.”

“The big one’s trying to trick us. Can’t you see it? But he won’t trick Nanesh. I won’t let him use words on us.”

“I’m not trying to cheat you,” Frank said. “Or use words on you. But that key is mine. I know it is.”

Except that wasn’t quite true. He felt like the key was his; he even believed it. But he didn’t know it. How could he? This was the first time he’d laid eyes on it.

With his free hand, Nanesh snatched the key off the bedroll, holding it up in the light. He squinted at it and then squinted at Frank, as though appraising each by the other. His eyes widened.

“Ah, would you look at that?” he said.

“What is it?

“It seems there’s a secret in this key.” Nanesh smiled grimly. “You need sharp eyes to spot it, but it’s there. Nanesh can see it now.”

“What kind of secret?” Frank said.

“Something its owner would know, if no one else. So Nanesh will make the big one a new deal. Tell me what the secret is and the key is yours. Guess wrong and it stays with me.”

“And then this is done,” Manesh said. “No one gets angry. No one has to fight. Fair is fair.”

“What does the big one say?”

Frank stared at the back of Nanesh’s upraised hand, as though trying to peer through it to glimpse the key. What was he willing to do to get it back? He could overpower the twins, but with Grizsix nearby, the fight wouldn’t be easy. And he would lose his ride to Uqmai, too. With the Copper Men still in pursuit of Thune, distance was his best chance at survival.

Loathe as he was to admit it, cagey old Nanesh had played his hand well.

“Fine,” Frank said. “We’ll do it your way.”

Nanesh laughed, a smug, joyless sound.

Frank closed his eyes, trying to conjure an image of the key. Its shape was easy to picture, but fine details escaped him. When it was on the bedroll, it had been partially obscured by one of the waterskins. And he’d only caught a fleeting glimpse of it when Nanesh snatched it up. He still had that strange dream-like memory, but he didn’t actually see the key there. It was like hearing someone tell a story, picturing it with your mind’s eye, and then trying to recall details that weren’t part of the telling (what the glassware at the bar looked like, the taste of the appetizer at the next table).

Nanesh had set him an impossible task, and so Frank decided not to even attempt it. Instead, he did what he’d learned to do on the battlefield. He let go.

He calmed his thoughts, turning his mind off and allowing his instincts – this body’s instincts – to guide him, the same way Sarge had carried him through that fight with the Copper Men. For a moment, he felt something impeding him, a mental block that he experienced as an elusive thought, something he knew was there but was just out of reach. But soon this passed and the world behind his closed eyes filled with hazy smoke.

When the smoke faded, a figure emerged from the no-color of the void. It was a woman, pale and wolf-eyed, with dark glossy hair. She wore a cascade of brightly colored skirts, scarlet and sunflower, the skirts cinched at the waist with a wide sash to accentuate her hips. Heavy bangles adorned her wrists, and she held two zills, or finger cymbals, one in each hand. A jeweled scarf shadowed her eyes, which were the color of burnished brass.

She danced towards him, rolling her hips, her bangles beating a rhythm and her finger cymbals punctuating each movement. She spun, her skirts swirling wildly to reveal a flash of shapely leg, and a thigh tattooed with the brightly colored image of a coiling snake.

Immediately, the dancing girl vanished, and the smoke cleared. He opened his eyes to find himself standing in the shade of the sunbeaten bluff, looking out over the pool, its water clear and mirror-still.

“Well,” Nanesh said. “What does the big one say?”

“A snake,” Frank said, his voice distant. “The key is marked with a coiling snake.”

Nanesh flashed a look that was equal parts incredulous and impressed. Then it vanished, and his face reverted to its typical sneer.

“Fine,” he shouted, tossing the key to the ground. “Nanesh didn’t want it anyway.”

Frank bent to pick up the key and saw the delicately engraved snake along its bow, as fine as spider silk. For a moment his fingertips hesitated, as though someone else had reached for it too, a second hand, invisible and cold, hovering just above his own.