Iron Quill (Absent Friends): Westward Ho!

[afeinman]

Westward Ho!

~1600 words.
 

"Cut off from the land that bore us,

 Betrayed by the land we find..."

Lilith surveyed the carnage before her with a dispassionate eye. The battle had been brief and brutal; a bloody mess, a feast for her young offspring. The saloon lay in tatters, its swinging double doors ripped off their hinges by Barbaros's bull rush. The long bar, its bottles broken, had been split length-wise by her sword's swing; the cleaved head of another of the Guild's tiresome guards sat upon it, a grotesque effigy to the madness of their attempted rule.

"Mistress!" her cherub said, its piping voice gravelly with the effort of battle. "The invaders are getting away!"

Let them, she thought. Let them flee; there is no place in this land where my eyes cannot see them, no place in all of Malifaux where my vines cannot reach them.

But these were private thoughts. To the cherub, she said only: "It is just as well."

Antwerp, one of her Tots, sidled up beside her and put its hand in hers. "Is something wrong?" the tiny Neverborn said, its vestigial wings fluttering idly in the charnel air. "You don't seem happy."

"Perceptive," Lilith said with annoyance. "And what would I speak of with you?"

"Am I not your friend? Your ootsy wootsy best buddy? What of the times we've spent together, devouring delicacies plucked from the chests of our enemies?"

Lilith smiled. The wee creature's bloodthirstiness had its own sort of charm. Some day the creature might grow into a proper asset; today it had feasted well on the kills that Barbaros had left behind, and was growing quite plump.

"No, seriously, what is it?" Antwerp said, his eyes dark. "You're usually so happy after a kill like this."

"I--" Lilith stopped. "Just remembering a quieter time."

"Before the Breach?"

"Don't ever call it that," Lilith said. The word set her teeth on edge. "But yes. Before the incursion; before the invasion. Before these trespassers--" she spat.

"What was it like, back then?" Antwerp asked, his wide eyes round and wondering.

"Simpler," she said. "Simpler."

#

The barricades had yet to go up when Lilith killed her first Guardsman, back before they'd started calling themselves the Guard. A disorganized mess of humans, pathetic and flimsy, but armed with serious firepower. The Neverborn had lost more than a few bretheren to their massed fire.

Lilith was tired of the waste, and so she formulated a strategy; but it required knowledge, and that was something in short supply. She found the humans simple-minded in some regards--precious few of them could pull the omnipresent strings of energy around them, a blind spot she found astonishing. But in other areas they were quite cunning, a relentlessly inventive and scheming sort.

She'd spent long nights blending with the trees, lurking in the shadows, tangling the path around packs of guardsmen to hear their schemes and learn their language. They spoke two different ones, she came to realize; the family that stayed together spoke their own tongue, and those that followed the Guild, another. A quick study, the Mother of Malifaux learned both. It served her brood well, for they were able to decipher enemy plans and tactics.

Then one day she found a man who spoke a new language--and another, and another, and six more. He carried with him a stack of knowledge, bound up in leather hides and imprinted on flat sheafs of  bleached paper. The others called him Doctor, a confusing term--for she'd already learnt that it meant those who laboriously healed the injured with bandages and other dark arts.

This Doctor was different; a soft man, with flesh pouring out around his garters and cuffs. He wore a strange flat hat, useless at keeping off the rain, and of scant use in the sun. His garments served only to deepen the mystery, for they were long and flowing but not the least bit attractive; and, if anything they seemed to hamper his movements. Lilith studied the man with odd detachment. The other humans deferred to him on some fronts, while deriding him behind his back.

After a long night of thinking and killing, Lilith smiled. She put down the rifleman she'd been carving up and beckoned her fetch to her. Together they traveled the tangled shadows, until they were on the outskirts of the human's town. Ahead lay an impressive, if doomed, edifice, its stonework hastily laid down, its wooden doors barred and locked.

"Julah," she said, and flicked one finger.

The doppelgänger smiled, a leering grimace covering her half-fleshed face. "Yes, Lilith?"

"What do you think of that one?" Lilith pointed with one slender arm.

Julah looked through the window of the second floor, its shutters ajar. "He seems fleshy, like an overgrown Tot."

"He has power."

"I feel it not."

"His is the power of knowledge, not of magic," Lilith said. "Bring it to me."

"Of course." Julah smiled; an assignment, something meaningful to demonstrate her passion to her mistress. She would not fail.

* * *

"Package for you, sir," the young lad said, his face barely dirty from the road.

"Very good, very good," Doctor Tavares said, putting down his quill and smiling. The lad was unfamiliar--but the governor was hiring all sorts these days. "Set it down on the ledge there, would you? That's a good boy."

The lad came in and doffed his cap, revealing a brilliant shock of curly hair. He had on an odd green kirtle, of a sort the doctor hadn't seen in decades--and even then, more of a young woman's fashion. The more things change, he thought to himself.

"Here alright?" the lad asked, settling the box of books down.

"That's fine." Tavares smiled again, briefly; lads liked smiles, right? Then he turned back to his page, full of arcane symbols stolen from a Neverborn site of power. The boy could show himself out, right?

No. "What've you got there?" the lad said, standing a bit close for the doctor's liking.

"Easy, there, lad, no need to stick your elbows in it!"

"Sorry, sir. It's just my enthusiasm. Seems like a lot of learning, what with all them arcane traceries and glyphs."

"What does a delivery lad like yourself ken of glyphs?" Tavares said. "Did Professor Grimble set you up to this?"

"I don't know any Professor Grimble," the lad said. "I's just been studying, that's all."

"Studying--how do you mean?"

"What I can, here and there. I've learnt my letters, and I can writ as well as any, if it's words I know."

"Have you, now? Well, bless your heart." Doctor Tavares regarded the youth with new eyes.

"I'm sorry, sir, but you've touched your quill down. I'm afraid it's quite ruined your page."

"Oh, I didn't do it. You did." The doctor cursed silently, for the lad was right--but the blotch wasn't too large. He took a pinch of sand and spread it over the ink before it dried; he'd have to scrape it off later. "But that's all right. Knowledge is more important."

"It'd mean a lot to me, sir, if'n you could share some of your learnings. There's only so much to be had from scraps." The lad pulled the top book off the stack. "Maybe this'n? It's got a brilliant cover."

"Well, now. Settle down there, and I'll teach you some history." He thumbed the cover familiarly; for this was Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley, and one of the doctor's favorites. He began to read, as the lad watched in rapt atteniton.

* * *

His mind dazzled with tales of the Caribbean and the Spanish Armada, the lad left the doctor's house late that night, after all but the watch-lanterns had been put to bed. His red curls bounced as he walked, and an old tune came to his lips. He'd heard it sung in the taverns at night, a war song from the generation before. He wasn't sure he'd got the words quite right, but the message seemed clear enough.

"So stand to the might of the steady,
 This world is a world full of lies
 A toast made of woes dead already,
 And a meal of the next man to die..."

As he sang his voice changed, becoming richer, though without much change in pitch; and by the time he crossed the square, he had become a she, taller, and possessed of a sharper gait. She waited on the edge of the square, where the trees grew tangled, and whistled. Presently a cherub appeared before her; and then there was a tangle of shadow, and her mistress appeared.

"They're idiots," the doppelgänger said. "They dream of gold in foreign lands, and of saving the day. Their stories are a conqueror's stories, where a child might overthrow an empire."

"But there is gold in our land," Lilith said.

"And a child," Julah said quietly. Both shuddered, thinking of the one whose dreaming haunted their spaces.

"What else did you learn?"

"His--he's not in charge, but he has the ear of one who would be. A man, a mortal, who seeks to control all their territories. He styles himself a Governor, whatever that means, and this man would be his proxy."

"A centralized ruler? They are idiots. Don't they realize how dangerous that is, to have a single person in charge? How fragile? How easily corrupted?"

"I know. Delicious, isn't it?"

"Indeed. This shall be easy to take advantage of. We shall replace this petty governor, and his proxy, and this town will fold in on itself like a deck of cards."

Julah shivered in anticipation. "Oh! Do I get to eat him? He did look quite tasty."

* * *

The tot looked up at Lilith. "Was that story true?"

"Most of it," she said. "The important parts, anyway."

"Is that how you closed the Breach?"

"Language!" Lilith snapped. Antwerp shrank back in fear. She reached down and chucked one hand under his chin. "The closing's a story for another day, surely. Now finish up your meal and run along! Mother's got work to do."

Antwerp nodded, and spun to pounch on the still-writhing form of the guardsman. In between mouthfuls, she heard him singing Julah's song...
 

 

 

Secret Ingredients used:

• Character: The Academic
• Line: "Oh, I didn't do it. You did."
• Location: A Saloon
• Random Wikipedia surfing