012

Frank’s saber gleamed in the light of the midday sun, its edge flashing red with the promise of violence. The exacter’s guard rushed as one, never hesitating, cudgels raised as if to brain a rabid dog. And in a way, that’s exactly what they were doing. For all reason had drained from Frank in that instant, his control evaporating like spit on hot sand, and what was left was less a man than an animal, howling and mad.

Don’t let them take you alive, marine!

The first blow caught him on the shoulder. He rolled with it, turning into the strike, and lashed out with his sword. The blade struck just above the guard’s gauntlet, passing through flesh and bone so cleanly Frank barely registered any resistance.

The crowd gasped as the severed hand sailed through the air, still holding the cudgel. The wounded guard screamed and grabbed at his new stump, blood from the pulsing wound splashing wet and loud on the paving stones.

Wake of Terror

Psychoplasm Cost: Passive

4 Will saves attempted.

2 fails. 2 passes.

Psionic Reserve: 85/100

Fear. It crept into the air like a shift in atmospheric pressure, equal parts scent and temperature change, like a coming storm.

Take it. It’s yours.

He reached for it instinctively, craving its familiar comfort like that first sip of whiskey the morning after. But Thune’s warning was still fresh in his mind, and he checked himself before he imbibed.

The others came on fast. Frank ducked a cudgel swing and kicked another guard in the knee, bending it backward with a sickening crunch. He drove his shoulder into a third, dumping the man to the ground. As he raised his saber for a killing strike, his hand erupted with pain. The blow to his wrist left his fingers numb, his sword clattering to the ground.

He cursed and drove his good fist into the attacker’s throat. The man crumpled, gasping, but before Frank could pounce, another guard tackled him from the side. He went down hard, his spear and javelins ripping loose from their tie-downs and scattering. He tried to roll, to reach for his weapons, but the shield strapped to his back left him turtled on the ground. A brass gauntlet slammed his ribs.

He grunted, tasting blood, and reached for his belt knife – gone. Lost in the scrum.

The fear was lost too, dissipating like smoke in a stiff wind.

He was stripped of his whole arsenal.

Bullshit! You got your hands, don’t ya? You got your feet. You got those piss yellow excuses for teeth. Use ‘em.

So he fought with what he had: fists, elbows, knees, fury. A brawl, not a duel. Dirty, desperate.

He caught a boot to the stomach and doubled over. Another hit to the face left stars swirling behind his eyes, entire galaxies.

When his vision cleared, he saw his saber. He reached for it. Too many boots. His fingers brushed the blade, but a kick sent it skidding away. As the blows rained down, he raised his arms to shield his head. Then the ground shook.

Thump… thump… hiss.

The barrage halted. He dropped his arms to see the crab monster had advanced, its armored bulk now looming twenty feet away. It snapped its huge mandibles and the cadre of warriors in glass armor fanned out in front of it, their glaives aimed at the exacter’s guards.

“What is the meaning of this?” Kreel shouted.

The howdah opened like a blossom, its top folding back in a cascade of silk scarves, as the veiled woman inside rose to her feet. Her hair was like black fire, limned in the strange light of the sun.

“I would ask the same of you, tariff lord.” Her voice was haughty and direct, aimed like an arrow shot straight for the exacter.

“Princess Sazhra.” Kreel’s voice was firm but girded with anger, straining at the edge of decorum. “I am conducting city business.”

“By kicking a man to death at the front gate?”

“This man is unregistered. A freelance killer. Possibly infected with plague. He tried to flee when I demanded he be examined.”

“He is my employee,” Sazhra said. “He enters Uqmai under my protection.”

“Princess,” the exacter tried again, “he consorts with Copper Men – there are protocols.”

“With due respect to a lady of one of the great houses,” the rat herald interjected, “it is only by remaining ever vigilant that we can protect our beloved city. None wish to see another plague. This man must be examined and cleared before –”

“And he shall be. By my personal physician.”

“That is most unusual, princess.” The herald’s voice maintained his soft tone. But around him, the rats began to frenzy, clamoring over one another, red eyes burning with hate.

“Do you mean to insult my physician in public?” Sazhra asked. “Or are you just careless with your tongue?”

“I meant no offense.” The rats began to shriek, the sound so hellish an old woman in the crowd fainted.

“Virelios has served my house faithfully for decades. He can trace his lineage back a hundred generations to the drowned city of Khessam. The texts you studied as an apprentice were written by his forebearers. Would you presume to question his knowledge?”

“Never.”

Sazhra turned her attention back to the exacter. “So then what is the hold-up?”

Kreel stood motionless for a long beat. Then, slowly, he lowered his cudgel.

“As you will, princess.”

One of Sazhra’s soldiers reached down and offered Frank a hand. He took it, and the soldier hauled him to his feet like he weighed nothing at all.

The exacter’s guards had already retreated, but the herald lingered.

“You may take your vermin and go,” Sazhra said.

“They are the blessed. You would do well to remember that.”

Sazhra’s gaze turned cold. “And you would do well to remember that you and your kind are guests in this city.”

“And we are most grateful for Uqmai’s hospitality.” The herald gathered his rodents and slunk away, his robes crawling.

The crab monster rotated toward the gate, its shell venting steam. The princess’s guard moved with it.

Frank bent to retrieve his scattered weapons, wincing as half a dozen wounds cried out simultaneously, and deposited Thune back in the bag.

“You still alive in there?” he said.

“Barely,” Thune whispered.

“Same.”

***

The physician's workshop was nestled within the husk of an old bathhouse, its domed ceiling now crusted with lichen and salt. Ivy pushed through the cracks in the walls, pulsing faintly with a yellow, bioluminescent sheen. Its thorns dripped a slow amber sap that collected in huge ceramic amphorae set around the room, but a few were overfilled and where the sap spilled to the floor, it smoked.

Frank woke to the smell of vinegar and crushed rose petals. His head throbbed, and he was lying on a narrow stone divan. The last thing he remembered was accepting a cup of wine from a sullen slave girl – “to wash the dust from your throat, good sir” – and choking on the taste of honey and menthol.

He’d had a headache then, not the worst of his life, but close enough. He’d been nauseous, too. Maybe one of those blows to the head had left him concussed, or maybe he’d been poisoned. Lesson learned. Be wary of Brass Men bearing drinks.

His wounds were dressed with loose linen wraps but he was otherwise unrestrained. His cloak was gone, his weapons stripped, and he could feel the sharp tug of something skittering against his ribs. He looked down and immediately regretted it.

Several beetle-like creatures, about the size of bottle caps, clung to his skin. Each one was translucent and full of wriggling organs, with long proboscises like mosquitoes. A few had rooted into his veins and bloated themselves with purplish ichor that didn’t look like blood. He shouted and swatted them away.

“Don’t move,” a voice said, smooth as a polished dagger.

Frank’s gaze shifted. The man who spoke stood at a nearby basin, washing his hands in milky seawater. He was thin and tall, six-four at least, and striking in a cold, alien way. He dressed in immaculate white robes and had silver hair, with just a hint of blue, that fell in wet coils to his shoulders. His hair was threaded through with blood-colored leaves, like an overgrown flower crown, and tiny red thorns ringed his eyes like some obscene mascara. Even his fingernails were stained the shade of old wine.

“You’re the doctor,” Frank said, trying not to breathe too deeply.

“I am Virelios,” the man replied. “And you are something of a curiosity.”

He turned from the basin and moved to a small writing desk fashioned from what appeared to be the split jaw of a sea beast. He made a few swift notations on parchment with a black quill.

“Your blood,” he said without looking up, “has characteristics I’ve only seen once before. And that was in a man who’d drowned three times and refused to stay dead.”

“That so?”

“Mm.” Virelios approached, his expression unreadable. One of the bugs detached from Frank’s skin with a wet pop and crawled up the physician’s wrist like a pet returning to its master. “I assume you’re not from the Shattered Seas.”

“No.”

“Nor the Darklands. Or the Golden Steppe. Or anywhere that speaks the old tongue.”

“Is it that obvious?”

Virelios leaned in. “I could taste the ozone on your breath when you coughed. You’re foreign. That much is certain. But from where?”

Yes and … , Frank told himself. He’d never done improv – even in a college full of weird theater kids, he found the improvers particularly unbearable – but he knew the basics. Think quick. Commit to the bit. Don’t break character.

“A place called Middle-Earth,” Frank said. “The island of Narnia.”

Virelios arched an eyebrow. “That name means nothing to me.”

“No one’s ever heard of it. Small place. Population of maybe five hundred. Mostly fisherman. I left when my parents died, hoping to make my fortune as a mercenary.” Frank let his head roll back against the divan. “Lost everything in the shipwreck. Been drifting ever since. Just looking for a ship. Work. A way home.”

“Interesting,” he murmured.

“You’re not buying it.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you’re not.”

“No,” Virelios agreed. “But I appreciate a well-told lie. That places you above most of the city’s other detritus.”

Frank exhaled slowly. “I take that as a compliment.”

“You should. The Brass Men of Uqmai have a saying, one of the tenets of prosperity they live by. ‘Truth is the most expensive commodity.’ Everyone here lies. There is no shame in it. But to do it poorly is a great offense.”

A silence stretched between them, filled only by the occasional clicking of bug mandibles.

“What are you doing to me here? Patching me up?”

“Yes, you had a few wounds, nothing life-threatening, given your constitution.”

“What do you know about my constitution?”

“I know everything about it. About you.” Virelios lowered his palm to the table and a few of the beetle creatures hopped off. He adjusted the angle of a mirrored lens set above Frank’s head, its edge rimmed by runes. “The body is governed by four humours: sanguine, phlegmat, melanchol, and choler. Madness and infirmities are born of imbalance. Too much fire in the belly makes you cruel, too much wind in the head makes you vain. Men think themselves the ultimate practitioners of free will, but all of us are slaves to our blood.”

“I believe it,” Frank said. “Can’t say I’ve felt much in control of myself lately.”

Virelios dipped a clawed finger into a vial of fluid drawn from Frank’s side and held it up to the light. It shimmered red and blue, like a beetle’s wing.

“The truth is this: there are four forces within us all, four essences of being. What you call strength, or skill, or stubbornness, these are just reflections of a deeper nature. You can train a body, refine a mind, bend your soul to discipline. But your essence? That’s who you are.”

“So what’s my blood say about me?”

“You are quite a remarkable man.”

CHOLER (MIGHT) – 10

Bigger, stronger and faster.
“Strength of flesh and bone. The power to break, endure, and survive. Yours was tempered in another world, but blood is blood.”

SANGUINE (CUNNING) – 7

Nimble, clever and with an eye for weakness.
“The sharpness of your senses and your instincts. Wits honed in a cutthroat business, now applied to blades and beasts.”

PHLEGMAT (WILL) – 8

Unbending, unyielding and unrelenting.
“Mental fortitude. The raw will to keep fighting, even with a sword in your gut and a ticking bomb in your skull.”

MELANCHOL (WEIRD) – 7

A corruption of the natural order.
“The unquantifiable. Your connection to the strange. Still shallow, but deepening. Argos changes all men – eventually.”

“So what am I doing here?” Frank said. “Who was that woman … that princess on the crab.”

Virelios’ eyes sharpened. “In Uqmai such directness is frowned upon. We may speak freely here, safe from listening ears. But do be careful outside, for your own sake.”

“It’s just … I figured maybe she’s a do-gooder. Or bored. Or maybe I remind her of someone.”

“None of the above,” Virelios said. He moved back to his jawbone desk, taking the vial of Frank’s blood with him. “She’s the last living scion of the House of Saar’Jin. Once, her family controlled trade routes from the Maw to the Bone Archipelago. A thousand ships bore their crest. Now?” He gestured vaguely. “A spire, a few retainers, and a crab too stubborn to die.”

“So why save me?”

“She has a need for you, I presume.”

“What need?”

“That is for her to know, not me.”

“Listen, I appreciate the help. But I’ve got places to be. I don’t have time to be trading favors. I’ve got a ship to catch.”

“That is just my presumption. You will have to speak with the princess herself to know her true motives. But, heed me, Brass Men are at their best when they are transacting, when an exchange is taking place. There are customs and precedents one can use to protect himself in such endeavors, even from the powerful. If the princess has need of you, that is the best-case scenario.”

“What’s the worst case?”

Virelios turned, and this time there was something dark in his face, curiosity touched with malice.

“She collects things. Rare things. Valuable things. You should pray you’re not one of those.”

Frank felt something cold curl in his gut. “Why?”

The physician smiled. The thorns around his eyes twitched, as if in amusement. “Because eventually, she’ll trade you. Or worse, she’ll forget you. And in Uqmai, that’s how people die.”