I’m not sure why I didn’t share this earlier, but this is a not-so-short story that I finished a few months ago. Content warning: Killing-Pen does contain some mature content, including offensive language.
CHAPTER 1
I’m a dead man.
The thought was a repetition. It rumbled in his mind, an avalanche gaining momentum as it thundered down the slope of eventuality. When, where, how? These were questions that did not matter. All he knew—all he needed to know—was that he, Edwood of Ruggenall, would die that day.
It was a thought that burrowed up from the deepest depths of his consciousness—squirming along the surface just to be stamped back into the unyielding soil that was his mind—as he stared out from the cockpit of his spacecraft, drifting ever closer to the Fringe world of Thalus. The pinpricks and peepholes of light that were the far planets of the Qeridanian system, and the still farther stars of the surrounding galaxy, seemed unconcerned with this mortal scuffle between the mind and its owner. The celestial bodies waited, immobile, out of reach: distant sparks serving as focal points, fixed bodies anchoring him to his seat in the universe, reminding him of how small he was; reminding him how much he hated to be reminded.
He took it all in: the Fringe world of Thalus, the star Qeridan, and the Vast, which lingered beyond, filling the emptiness of space. He was a spectator to his fate much as he was a spectator to the small gathering of planets, observing the galaxy from behind a few sparse centimeters of silica glass. Edwood’s spacecraft, the Rumbacha Hellion, he had named after the only true love of his brief existence: a particularly fierce liquor from his first contract, a local brew from a small Kellitaca colony. It was a fiery name—as fiery as the events that had drawn him there. Rumbacha was fast becoming his sole source of affection; or, at least, it was the only recipient that seemed to return the favor. He doubted even rumbacha could soothe him now.
Edwood took his time, letting his craft drift into place. He would wait as long as possible before locking orbit with the big, rumbling, rock that was Thalus. The orbit-lock was the end to his freedom, it was the shackle and the chain, and Thalus was the great cosmic ball that was going to pull him under. There was no returning from that dive, not for him. He knew because the Priestess Gwendolyn had told him so.
It was the custom of all herdsmen to visit the priestesses before a contract. It was the custom of the priestesses to speak truth. The Priestess Gwendolyn had warned him of his death—not that he should escape it, but that he might face it head on. And a word given by a Dour priestess was a law of fate. Only fools questioned the word once given. And oh, Edwood had questioned it. He had struggled against it with everything in him. But now, with the Fringe fanning out before him, all around him, its very existence was a reminder of Gwendolyn’s final tidings. Out here, there was no forgetting. Edwood’s first trip to the Fringe would be his last.
But she had given him more than just bad news. She had given him a promise as well, a single comforting hope yet to be experienced. It was a memory yet to be made, and he held tight to the promise of its coming. ‘Behind the counter, the leftmost cask,’ Gwendolyn had told him. Hope came in strange forms, it seemed—in this case, at the bottom of a liquor cask behind the counter of a lonely tavern. A strong drink will set me right, Edwood knew—hoped. The tavern was waiting below, now, on the untamed plains of Thalus, in the very colony where his fate awaited him. Edwood wanted to laugh at the horror of it all.
Behind the counter, the leftmost cask, he had echoed to himself upon leaving the priestess’s quarters; that was as close as he came to laughing, from shrugging the whole thing off. It was seeing Gwent—once mentor, now partner—that hammered his doubts into place.
With fifty-odd standard years under her sash, Gwent Masani was the exception to the herdsman rule. Seeing her leave Gwendolyn’s chamber, mere minutes after he had—that was what really troubled him. The older huntress, despite her smug scowl, she too held the priestesses in high esteem, trusted their word above her own expertise. She knew, as they all did, that none of them truly had a hand in their own fate. Edwood thought he had known it, too. It was only now, with the promise of an end beyond his control, that he revolted against the idea. His instincts told him to fight it; his mind told him there was no use. Serve, he told himself. Do your job, and do it well. The machine that was the universe would go on despite his absence. No, he thought; if the universe was a machine, he was the electric current. He could try to fight his fate, or he could be the instrument that kept the machine running. With that thought as his safety pin to the fabric of sanity, Edwood had left the priestesses and the city behind him, wearing his usual easy smile, and leaving his fellow herdsmen none the wiser to his torment.
The light of the yellow dwarf, Qeridan, glared down on the planet and far beyond it. It glowered at him as well, from just out of sight, beyond the edge of the portside windshield—less than three stellar units from his current location, so the instruments illuminating the dashboard told him. A touch of his usual giddy anticipation returned to him as he studied the untamed reaches of the Fringe world rumbling through the vast, cold nothingness of the Qeridanian system.
A crescent-shaped firebrand of starlight pierced Thalus’ atmosphere, oozing orange-hot like a drop of balmy wax across the plains, woodlands, and roiling cloud cover that permeated the planet’s surface. Edwood considered the sight of the gradually engulfing thaw, considered that it was not the heat of starlight spreading across the planet that he observed, but the shift in perspective as Rumbacha Hellion drifted into orbit. It was the only indication of motion: that gentle engulfing, as the remainder of the galaxy rested in fixed lethargy. The stillness was a taunt, a cruel whisper: that the universe did not concern itself with such out-of-the-way planets as Thalus, that Edwood’s end would come at the hands of back-world squatters, in the center of a tiny, yellow dwarf galaxy nestled on the edge of existence.
Behind the counter…
Edwood shut out the notion of his death; this time he did not bury the squirming thought-parasite, but yanked it from the soil and cast it aside for good. He tightened his hand around the steering haft, feeling the rubberized grip stick to the leather of his fingerless gloves. He forced his brain to adhere to his task with the same sticky resolve. Below, Thalus was a spheroid of rock and sea beneath a membrane of life, a fetus of the cosmos struggling its way to maturity. It struggled, though it was not the planet that was young, but the inhabitants: the slaves who had learned to enslave it to their will, a different kind of parasite in a different kind of soil. Thalus belonged to the humans.
Their kind was the sheep of the universe—sheep that quarreled and bickered and believed they followed no shepherd, right up to the point of plunging off the edge of a cliff. ‘Creatures that follow nothing are slaves to everything,’ so the priestesses said. Some of those sheep were dangerous. Humans had a term for them, didn’t they? What was it? Black sheep? Wolf in sheep’s clothing? Edwood shook his head. It didn’t matter. They wielded a power they didn’t understand—no one understood. With that kind of power, even sheep could be dangerous.
With a jab of his finger, he activated the orbit-lock. The shuttle shifted starboard, slowly, bringing the nose down to face the planet’s distant surface. Somewhere beneath the swirling gunmetal clouds waited Baláv, his contract city. Village, he corrected. Fringe colonies could be so quaint. Edwood had never seen a settlement smaller than Pheryth, and even that had spanned a continent. Within the Vast, cities did not grow so small. Here, in the Fringe, things didn’t seem to grow at all.
Rumbacha Hellion finished its lazy rotation; Qeridan’s last tendrils of light clung to the windshield as the craft turned away, fingers of glare slipping across the polished surface as if in search of a handhold. The star was clinging to him, begging him not to make that dive; warning him, Edwood thought as unease screwed his gut tight. The streaks grew smaller and smaller—the fingers failing to catch hold—and winked out of existence altogether. Thousands of square kilometers of Thalus’ plains stretched from one end of the windshield to the other, saturated with pockets of accumulating moisture that sparked with lightning bolt temperament.
The Dour priestesses would have told him to ignore that anxiety, as if one’s innards coiling into a pulsing, fist-sized knot was something that could be ignored. Tether the sensations of the mind to the purpose of the body, Edwood recited, the words seeming to echo in the dull silence though never uttered aloud. Like a body drifting through space without weight or purpose or effort to plant it firmly in place, out there in the darkness, a mind unanchored will spill into the Vast. The mind will drift across the darkest shadows of the universe, to the farthest edges of space. It will gaze out on the nothingness and scream.
Edwood recalled the lecture as instinct recalls a movement of muscle fibers. He shook the words away, dissipating the singsong voice of Priestess Gwendolyn from his head. It wasn’t his mind that he feared would spill out, but his breakfast. Logic told him it was but expectation that twisted his gut like the turbulent clouds of Thalus below—not the fear of failure, or death, or the great unknown that waits beyond the edge of the Vast, where only the Shepherd leads. It was the silliest of expectations that held him there: the notion of diving down into thousands of square kilometers of wildlands, mountains, forests, and oceans nearly microscopic in scale, poised to rush up and meet him with but the slightest pressure against the steering haft. The dive was his least favorite part of the job.
A melodic prompt sounded from the instrument panel, shocking him from his anxiety. A craft was approaching on the motion sensor’s three-dimensional readout, a craft identical to his own. It was the herdsman standard issue, a one-man propulsive shell of ultra-tough Embriate tiles and silica glass, outfitted with a computator engine and short distance space-leap capability. The range of their leaps was often limited to the brief span between star-systems, resulting in travel that resembled short, shambling hurtles across the known galaxies. Herdsmen affectionately referred to these leaps as ‘hopping the Vast.’
The prompt registered a second time, bleeping impatiently. Edwood reached across the dashboard, flipped the comm switch.
“Took your time,” came the voice of Gwent Masani, with an unusually urgent ring. “Heard some interesting news back on Messa.”
Edwood’s heart sank into his belly. Damn the priestess, he thought, she must have told her. “I assume that’s what kept you,” he murmured, dreading what was to come.
On the motion sensor, the teardrop-shaped blip that represented Gwent’s craft glided across the holographic display until sitting parallel with his. The Rake, as Gwent had named her ship, was concealed from physical view by the starboard screen. “It’s big news. They’re broadcasting all over the electro-lightwave network,” Gwent went on.
Edwood’s brow twisted in confusion. Broadcasting? “What are they saying?” he asked, his words probing like a Scethereen’s tentative feelers.
“Another colony’s fallen,” she said, “a Fringe world in a local system. Same as before: a human settlement staged a coup. Our diplomats were killed, the administrators disbanded. Any human who served under the Fulcrum’s directive was executed. They took out our eyes and ears. They have complete control.”
Edwood sat staring into the planet’s turbulent surface, hearing the other herdsman’s words, thinking it must be a joke. But when was the last time Gwent had told a joke? “That’s the second world to fall in the last standard month.”
“Twice as many as any month before it,” Gwent agreed with a grunt.
“Have the Dour said anything? The Assembly? How do they plan to deal with the humans?”
“Deal with them? They’re Fringe worlds, Edwood. No one cares about a few million squatters and refugees. They’re not even a threat, except…”
“What?”
Static crackled in the speaker, rushing to fill the silence.
“No one knows how they did it,” Gwent said at last, and static crackled as she sighed. “Anything larger than a group of townsfolk, and the EW should’ve picked up on their movement, their communication. But there was nothing. Either millions of insurrectionists outmaneuvered all our safety nets, or a few dozen managed to overthrow a city full of loyalists.”
“I’m not sure which is worse,” Edwood muttered.
“There’s a name circling the network—a title, of sorts—the man supposedly behind the attacks. They’re calling him the Scagged King.”
Hardly a flattering title, Edwood thought, rolling the words around in his head. “Why a scag, do you think? Not exactly the noblest of creatures.”
“If I ever have the chance to kill him, I’ll be sure to ask him first,” Gwent said. “Regardless, the humans have credited him as their leader. The Assembly has yet to confirm his existence.”
Edwood frowned at that. It wasn’t so long ago he had killed a human in a similar position. It was painfully recent, in fact. Farrakhan, he thought, smothering a pang of guilt that sprouted with the name. Marcus Farrakhan was a natural leader, or had been. Natural leaders were naturally dangerous. Still, Edwood regretted the human’s death; he had regretted it even as he blasted his skull into pieces. And for what? The fall of one only leads to the rise of another.
“This Scagged King is behind both? How’s that even possible?” he wondered. “One man leading two revolts on separate planets, only weeks apart?”
“Farfetched, to say the least,” Gwent consented. “Chances are it’s just human propaganda, someone to serve as the symbol of their temper tantrum, someone to blame when it all falls apart. First it was Farrakhan, though his methods were far less dramatic. Now it’s this self-made king. It doesn’t change anything, not for us. We still have a job to do, but I figured you should know,” she intoned. “Just because we’re promised a safe return doesn’t mean there won’t be trouble. Watch yourself down there.”
Edwood winced at the words. “I thought that’s what you were for,” he said after a pause, chuckling to cover up his hesitation.
“Your faith should rest in the Fulcrum, not the hunters they employ,” Gwent chirped back, as humorless as ever.
“Relax, Masani,” he sighed, “Let me enjoy my first trip to the Fringe.”
“That’s precisely why I can’t relax. Inexperience and the Fringe go together about as well as a fattened babe and a half-starved scag.” Edwood was silent at the image conjured by her words, picturing his own face on the body of the babe as the beastly scag prowled ever closer. It was just absurd enough to make him laugh; just close enough to the truth to keep him silent. The speaker crackled as Gwent sighed. When she spoke again, her voice had softened, “The Fringe isn’t something you can prepare for, not really. Chasing humans and Projections through the streets of Ulta Messa is different from hunting them out here. Simulations can’t prepare you for their unpredictable nature. We’re outside of Fulcrum jurisdiction, now. There’s no one to depend on but ourselves.”
“This is what you trained me for, Gwent. I’ll be fine,” Edwood said, forcing himself to believe his own words. Despite his efforts, the tone of caution in his partner’s voice did little to soothe the restlessness in his gut.
There was a long pause, a silence interrupted only by the soft crackling of the comm. “It still scares you, doesn’t it?” Gwent asserted, her tone suggesting a mere statement of fact.
Edwood snorted through the slits of his nostrils, a spurt of forced indifference he hoped would carry through to the other end of the comm system. The response was as instinctual as reciting the Dour lectures, a skill well honed: to shrug the accusation away before he had the chance to grasp its meaning. It didn’t work. He knew her meaning, so he did not know why he asked: “Scares me?”
“The dive.”
The falter of his smile was his only answer. The answer was not for her; she had already known it, just as he had tried his damnedest not to know. He nearly laughed at the absurdity of it all. Acrophobia, that’s you’re weakness, a belittling voice whispered in his ear. You’re going meet the Shepherd; you’re going to die. But it’s the dive that scares you even more than that. A wrenching of gravity, coupled with a fear of heights—the bane of Edwood the Herdsman.
Then another thought occurred. Maybe that’s how it will happen. For the first time, the thought of his death struck him with true terror, and he shifted uncomfortably in his self-made seat of apprehension.
Behind the counter, the leftmost cask, came the words unbidden to his mind, and he clung to the lonely ray of hope.
“A funny occupation to find yourself in, considering,” Gwent murmured.
“Yeah, well, none of us really get to make that choice, do we?” Just as his smile had faltered, so too his unmistakable humor left his voice, if only for a moment. “Ah well, egg before the chicken, I suppose,” Edwood said, then stopped short.
There was silence, then Gwent’s terse voice.
“What?”
Edwood hesitated, cursed himself under his breath. “It’s a human phrase…” When no response came, it was clear his answer had not been enough to satisfy her. He added, reluctantly, “They drop idioms like coins in a wishing well. Guess I picked up on one or two during my last contract. It means, loosely, ‘what comes first, comes first.’ ”
The answering silence made him squirm in his seat. “Just how much time did you spend with Farrakhan before putting a bolt in him?” she asked.
“It was a difficult contract; the trail was a long one,” he answered slowly. “Besides, I did put the bolt in him, in the end.”
“I’m not questioning your loyalty, Edwood, I just thought you knew better. Attachment is something you keep back home. You don’t take it with you on a job.”
“I remember my training same as you,” he shot back, then bit jagged teeth into his tongue. “I guess some things are only learned the hard way.”
‘Some things aren’t known until brave men try,’ Farrakhan’s voice came rumbling back to him.
Edwood felt like he would gladly sit in the silence until it suffocated him, but Gwent wouldn’t have it. “Come on,” she said. “We still have a job to do.”
The blip on Edwood’s holographic motion sensor charged forward, and Gwent’s craft flashed into view in front of him. Her shuttle was an outline of shadow against the planet’s surface, while Qeridan glittered off the ridges of the steely top, glaring starlight back at him. The Rake rocketed out of orbit, nose-diving into Thalus’s atmosphere.
“Fulcrum’s favor,” Edwood cursed, watching her craft speed away. He added, as if the interjection would dissolve the tension that threatened to smother him in his own cockpit: “Shhhhhit.”
He dove after her. Twin propulsion jets blasted Rumbacha Hellion into action, tailing the silver teardrop of his partner’s craft. Edwood shivered away the cold of the cramped cockpit as the nose pierced the planet’s atmosphere. He felt the thick knot of his intestines uncoil, only to rush into his throat as the center of weight shifted from the artificial gravity clutching him to his seat to the pull of the planet filling his windshield. He shuddered through turbulence, feeling the thick chitin of his natural exoskeleton absorb and dissipate the wild bucking of the spacecraft. The milky swirl of water vapor clouded the windshield, obstructing his view of Thalus’ surface. The clouds winked with flashes of lightning, illuminating the cockpit for split seconds at a time, the answering rumbles of thunder drowned out by the roar of the engines.
He knew it then, as he soared blindly through the tempest. This is how it would end. He would break through the storm, just to collide with the uncompromising summit of a mountain. But the Tellurometer would warn me the mountains were there. Lightning would strike, shorting out the engines, sending him crashing down to Thalus. But the gliders would kick in; I’d soar safely to ground. The triggers would jam; the wings would never eject; he would plummet, paralyzed and—
The fog dissipated as quickly as it had appeared, and he pulled back on the haft as the ground came into view, kilometers nearer than last he had seen. He was skirting across wide-open meadows riddled with trees, submerged in the deep shadow of fuming clouds. Torrents of rain battered the outer hull, rattling against Embriate plating, drenching the windshield in miniature waterfalls. Through the daytime darkness, the instruments littering the dashboard guided him to his destination. It was only when Gwent’s voice ruptured his consciousness that he realized how intent he had been on maneuvering through the gale that welcomed him to the Fringe world.
“Meet you at Baláv,” she said before the crackling of the speaker cut out for good. Edwood nodded silent affirmation, channeled a calming breath. It was the second time he had felt true terror that day: terror at the thought that it all could have ended then, terror at himself for preferring that to what he now faced. Ahead of him loomed the unknown, the certainty of his fate waiting just out of sight—a fate not yet materialized, concealed among the broiling shadows of Thalus. He wanted to scream in the emptiness of the cockpit, in the silence molested by battering rain. Instead he murmured, grateful that Gwent Masani was no longer there to hear:
“Behind the counter, the leftmost cask.”
CHAPTER 2
You don’t die today, Gwent reminded herself. She couldn’t remember how many times she had thought the words, but they always came true. Everything the priestesses said came true.
Twigs snapped and popped; branches rustled. She couldn’t see the creature, but it didn’t seem to mind if she heard it. She had hardly stepped foot on Thalus before it had made its presence known. The Rake’s cockpit still stood open on its hinges, jutting up from the ship’s frame. She didn’t dare shut it now—even under cover of the baying wind—lest the subtle hiss draw the creature’s attention completely.
It was the Projection, she knew; it had found her—or would, soon enough. She had come here to hunt it, but it was hard to feel the huntress as she hunkered down beside her craft, kneeling in the mud as it stomped its way towards her.
Only one dies, and it isn’t you.
She and The Rake sat in the middle of a small clearing, a dense, dead forest of gray and black trunks, branches, and gnarled roots surrounding her chosen landing zone. Thalus’ surface was darker than it had looked from orbit. Tears and shadows spilled from the bellies of pregnant clouds.
The sound of feet slapping mud was fast approaching, and there was breathing—heavy, heaving breaths—to accompany the snap of dead tree limbs. She spotted it, and her blade seemed to leap into her hand. Her eyes tracked the specter rushing through the trees, too dark and too fast to make out any details. But it was coming her way, that much she knew. A shiver ran through her, and bumps puckered her skin. She straightened, her herdsman’s chalys-knife at the ready, her knees bent, primed to leap.
Leaping was all she could do as it came barreling from the trees, towering above her on two sinewy legs. The creature’s eyes fell on the shimmer of her craft first, then snapped to her. But even with that moment’s pause she barely had enough time to react. It charged, a blur of cream-colored fur swatting at her as she dove, snagging the tail of her cloak. Its wide slash carried through, striking The Rake’s hull with a clang of claws on metal. Gwent hit the mud and rolled aside as a foot came down on her, heavy and flanged and covered in fur.
You don’t die today, Gwent thought as she scrambled to her feet. Too late.
It had her by the cloak—one hand at the nape of her neck, the other strangling a fistful of her cape and the jumpsuit beneath. Gwent’s feet left the ground as the creature hoisted her up above its head. A spin and a grunt, and Gwent was flying through the air with no need of her craft. She soared over The Rake, arms flailing, eyes focused on her destination.
Gwent tumbled into the mud, rolled with a deftness that defied her age, and already heard paws pounding the ground behind her. She came up on her feet, sliding with the momentum, spinning and thrusting out with her blade. Nothing was as satisfying as the way the blade slipped into skin, like a butter knife into a pool of pudding.
The creature roared and thrashed and sent her sprawling with an angry sweep of its arms. The dagger was left behind, stuck deep in the creature’s chest. Blood spurted as it writhed, and Gwent felt thick, hot wetness smear across her arm, burning against the cool of the rain. She gained her feet, slowly, breathing heavily, knowing the height of danger was not over, but merely postponed. The creature, the Projection—she knew for a certainty, now—was hysterical in its pain and rage, spinning and lashing out at nothing, the dagger hilt protruding from its sternum. Then its flesh morphed and shuddered, compressing in on itself, bounding like waves into the wound at its chest. Skin and bone and meat became fluid, collapsing into its center like starlight into a black hole. The formless mass shrunk until it was no more, and the knife clattered to the ground with a solid whump.
Gwent retrieved the heavy, puckered blade, and felt her age. Blood dissipated from the chalys-knife in wisps of steam; the same steam rose from Gwent’s arm where the creature’s lifestream had speckled her cloak. She rolled her shoulders before slipping the blade into its sheath, tucked neatly under her sash. Her back ached from the long fall and the hurried roll that had followed. But she hadn’t died, and that was something.
The priestesses are never wrong, she thought with a smirk. She turned to The Rake, inspecting the fresh scratches that blemished its polished hull. That was the second time she heard the snapping of twigs. Back so soon?
When she rounded on the creature, she felt only disappointment. Pale-faced and glowering, it came into view—not a creature at all, she realized. Just a fat man. Looking at him, she was surprised his approach had been as quiet as it was. Same as the Projection, the fat man’s eyes fell first to the dull glimmer of The Rake. When his eyes met hers, she saw no surprise in them, and no love.
“Saw y’ur ship comin’ down, off-worlder. Best hop back in and go back wherever you came form. The Fringe isn’ kind to y’ur type.” He waved her off like a bad memory.
Gwent stared at him in answer. He was a swollen mound of a man whose name she didn’t know. He was as pale as she was dark. The arms crossed over his heaving chest mimicked the deep curve of his lips—purple with cold or perhaps fright. He wore a scowl between his cheeks, but also in his eyes. They were eyes that appraised Gwent’s cloak with distaste.
“Y’got soil in y’ur ears? Piss off.”
It was the kind of welcome Gwent had learned to expect—she, a Pertheon, whom humans could rarely distinguish from their own kind; not like Edwood who’s chitin-plated hide stood out from orbit. Aside from the patterned specks of ink-black skin worn like a tattoo across her back, she looked every bit as human as they did. Rich histories and complicated anatomies separated the two species, Human and Pertheon, by a distance as sweeping and immeasurable as the Vast, but none such features were discernible through the heavy gray cloak that shielded her from the battering rain. But it was that heavy gray cloak—donned loosely over her left shoulder—that told discerning eyes everything they needed to know about who she was and why she was there.
She stared at the man whose name she did not know, his voice barely audible above the baying wind. Rain pit-pattered against the back of Gwent’s hood, filling her ears with the cracking of coarse fabric, reverberating inside her skull. The man still scowled, eyes squinting against the downpour, fleshy cheeks shiny with moisture. Behind him, the narrow shafts of the forest creaked and groaned against the wind, kowtowing to its unrelenting mistress. Reaching up, Gwent shut The Rake’s hatch against the gale. Seat’s gonna be soaked, she grumbled to herself. Then she took a step towards him, spinning on her heel.
“N-Now I’ll not say it again!” he said, his fat lips pulled tight into his cheeks, forming deep crescents of shadow as he back-stepped. “Hop back in y’ur damned craft and be on y’ur way, greycloak.”
Gwent paused at that. It was a simple observation, yet one she wouldn’t expect to hear from a man like him—one of so many rats inhabiting the sewage trough of the Qeridan system. How many Fringe-world squatters had seen enough of the universe to identify her kind so easily?
As she considered him, she had to bite her tongue to stifle a laugh. The man had eyes like an insect squeezed between the flabby fingers of an infant, eyes bulging from his skull: big, round, and frightened. Almost as big, round, and frightened as he is. Gwent locked her jaw to smother a leering grin.
“Oi! There ye’ are, Warthen,” called a newcomer approaching from the wood, a panicked-looking man with a panicked voice, trudging through the rain with a torch sputtering in his hand. The flame bowed to the same mistress as the forest. It billowed wildly in the wind and rain, a fiery perch of wax-soaked hessian clinging to its feeble life. It stumbled and scrambled like a drunkard trying to pick itself up off the ground, and Gwent thought that the flame, so easily snuffed out, resembled the fat man—this Warthen. His life, too, grew feebler and feebler with each sentence he smeared Gwent’s way.
The newcomer’s gaze shifted to meet that of Gwent Masani, and he halted a pace from Warthen. He held the torch aloft, squinting as he strained to make out the features hidden in the shadow of that gray cowl. “Y’ur…Y’ur human?” he asked in disbelief, his eyes staring with the ravenous hope of a starved hound offered a scrap. It was the kind of hope that threatened to lash out in savage instinct should the scrap was snatched away.
“She’s a ‘erdsman,” Warthen growled.
The skinny man’s eyes flickered between them, confused. “Didn’ know any humans hunted for the Fulcrum.”
“News travels slowly in the Fringe; I imagine there are many things you don’t know,” Gwent said, hoping it would be enough to sate them. “The Dour thought we might have a better chance at diplomacy if they sent a human.”
“If they were ‘oping for diplomacy, they shouldn’t of sent a black-skinned wench,” grumbled the scared-looking man. “Still,” he added, “If there’s a time to be picky, this ain’ it.”
“She ain’t ‘ere to ‘elp us,” Warthen spouted. “Her kind ne’er does.”
Gwent shot the fat man a sideways glance, made a mental note of his plump face—everything from the slimy, raven hair pasted against the forehead, to the wide, shallow nose protruding from the twisted brow, to the curve of the doubled jowls flowing from ear to lopsided ear. She hoped he was the guilty one; she hoped he wore that sneer as she spilled the lifestream from his throat.
“I’m here by contract of the Fulcrum,” she said, her voice stiff and controlled, and under-swept by the silky tones of the Pertheon tongue. “The Astral Assembly received word of trouble in the forest near Baláv.”
“Trouble’s a funny word for it,” the skinny one said, his tone wavering between desperation and distrust. “The spirit’s been a-hauntin’ the region for weeks now, an’ there ain’t a thing we c’n do.”
“Come off it, Ives,” Warthen grumbled. “She might be human, but she serves the Fulcrum—”
Might be human, Gwent echoed. Something about the way he had said it suggested it wasn’t her skin color that bothered him. “I answer to the Assembly,” she said, “an administrative body consisting of every known species, including humans.”
“An’ the Assembly answers to the Dour. The Dour cunts ain’ never ‘ad a spot o’ mercy for the lesser races. It’d take a negro to believe anythin’ else. Got one standin’ right a’front of us as proof.”
Lesser race—that part is true enough. And Gwent released an inward snarl at the two words she never dreamed to hear conjoined in matrimony: Dour cunts.
“Martin claims it be the works of a Beastlian,” Ives went on. “ ‘e says we ain’t find no mercy ‘till the beast gone away.”
“This Martin,” Gwent said, “Who is he?”
“Why, ‘e’s the healer; tends the ill, scares away the darkness.”
Witchdoctor, more like, Gwent frowned. “Not very effective at his job, if seems,” she grunted.
“Not since the appearance of this wood beast,” Warthen grumbled.
“It ain’t his doin’,” Ives said. “Some things’re even beyond Martin. Martin says the spirit must be done away with—”
“Come along then,” Gwent interrupted. “I’ll need to see the thing for myself. Lead me to Baláv. I’ll tend the rest.”
“You gonna kill this woodland spirit y’urself?” the fat one asked, one petulant eyebrow raised in disbelief.
“Don’t know about killing it, but it’ll be rid of Baláv,” Gwent answered. “I’m not really that type of hunter.”
“No, y’ur not. Y’ur a herdsman,” Warthen sneered. “I knows the look. S’tell me, herdsman, why’re you really ‘ere? Why come all this way if not to slay the damned spirit?”
Doesn’t miss much, does he? she noted. And misses fewer meals. The fat one knows what I am by the color of my cowl; knows better than to trust me, unlike his buddy. “Here for a spot of sightseeing,” Gwent said. “Always heard the Fringe worlds were beautiful, so long as you stay clear of the colonies.”
“Jokester, eh? See wha’ she is, Ives?” Warthen said, addressing a glob of spittle to Gwent’s boots. It was fortunate the intended insult was lost among the pouring rain—fortunate for the fat man.
“Would’ya jest of the fate of an entire colony, Fringe world or not?” Ives asked, swapping his tone of distrust for an all-out plea. “Truth now, why come all this way? Surely you mean to ‘elp us?” Gwent knew the words they wanted to hear, but she wasn’t in the habit of lying. Half-truths, on the other hand…
“The ore mines are economical assets to Thalus. Through a chain of bonds I have no desire to explain, Thalus’ assets affect the economy of the Fulcrum as a whole. Embriate mining has been impeded since the appearance of this…Beastlian of yours. I’m here to see to the liberation of those mines.”
“Ya see? Not a spot of mercy in ‘em,” Warthen said. He glared at the hooded stranger, unabashed by the glint of barely contained hatred in her eyes. “And I still says we don’t need the help of y’ur kind.”
“Your friend doesn’t seem to agree,” Gwent intoned, eyes shifting to the thinner of the two.
“Aye, master,” Ives said, nodding savagely, “We ain’t rest easy ‘till the beast be dealt with. Don’ care ‘bout the mines, and don’ care much about y’ur motives, so long as you see the thing gone. Come.” He turned away, starting down the path he had come, mud slurping beneath his heels. Gwent ignored Warthen’s glare as she stepped past him and nearly suffocated on his stench. Ticker and barberry, she noted before snorting the smell from her nostrils. A curious combination of rancid, choking sour, and sugary sweet. Only one of the two seemed to fit the fat human’s disposition.
Her mind roamed ahead to the colony as she trod behind Ives. The witchdoctor will be dangerous, Gwent thought to herself. The humans who inhabited these Fringe worlds were superstitious, easily swindled. They had fallen prey to old ideas from old cultures. Creatures who follow nothing are slaves to everything. They would trust this so-called healer, Martin, without hesitation. Get on his bad side, and the whole colony would turn against her. Then she’d have to kill them all, and that was far more effort than she cared to waste on this back-alley of a planet.
Besides, humans were more dangerous than they knew. In their ambition, they had conceived Projections—dangerous blood-creatures and phantasms of rage; the rage was for the enemies of their creators, but Projections were wild creatures, as wild as the emotions they embodied, and they caused indiscriminate harm, to aliens, to nature, to other humans. The universe needed some form of defense against such a menace, or so the Astral Assembly decided. And so came herdsmen.
With the aid of their Projections, humans might have been formidable. Only their power seemed to work of its own accord, oftentimes without the projectors realizing they had created anything at all. And, more often than not, human hatred always came back on their own kind, eventually. These days, Gwent was called on to protect her enemies as often as her friends. Let the creations destroy their creators, Gwent had often thought. But the Dour were ever merciful to the lesser species, despite what the fat human said. Far more than she would be.
“How’s it you plan to liberate the mines? Don’ see no guns on ya, no blades neither,” Warthen noted, ambling along behind them.
“If guns could kill Beastlians, what need would you have for me?” Gwent asked, not bothering to tell them about what few weapons she did have hidden away, weapons that killed only one kind of beast. Beastlian, she thought—a human term, a word attributed to any creature they didn’t care to understand. Gwent smiled softly. By that definition, she was a Beastlian, whether the two oafs realized it or not. By that definition, every species that made up the Fulcrum was—from the vain, sometimes wild beast-men of the Raulthahir; to the noblest of them all, the Dour maidens themselves. The Dour cunts.
The smile slipped away.
They were trudging beneath the trees. Gwent studied the spindly arms that twisted from their stems, the forest canopy that was but a skeleton with no meat or flesh to support. The ground was mud on mud—no blanket of fallen foliage, no vegetation creeping among the roots. The forest was beyond dead, for reasons she didn’t know or care to know. The tree branches were but bony shadows against gray skies; they did little to shelter them from the gale. Gwent thought to herself—her own inner voice muffled by the constant patter of rain against her cowl—that the trees were like the humans seeking freedom on these same Fringe worlds. Out here, everything dies.
“So how’ll ya’ do it?” Warthen demanded, bringing Gwent’s attention back to the present. “How’ll you slay the thing—whatever it is?”
Gwent sighed. “Never met a beast I couldn’t slay. Nor a man,” she added, glancing over her shoulder at the plump-faced Warthen. “One step at a time. Have to see the thing, first.”
“You kill many beasts in your time?” Ives asked.
“Many,” she said.
“And men?” Warthen’s voice rumbled from behind.
Gwent concealed a grin in the shadow of her cowl.
It wasn’t long before the trees began to thin, and the storm to wane. Their feet carried them through the mud, into a clearing occupied by clusters of cabins gathered around a larger structure of stone, mortar, and thatched roof. Wholly out of place was the shimmer of polished metal, a silvery vessel lying in plain sight, comatose on the edge of the village. It was a vessel identical to Gwent’s very own. Edwood’s spacecraft. The two men escorting her seemed just as surprised by the sight as she was. They halted at the edge of the wood, staring at the craft, sharing startled glances.
“Didn’ mention ya’ brought others with ya’,” Warthen growled.
“That one slipped past you, did it?” She smirked, but inside she was fuming. Reckless—even for him. Her eyes shifted to the larger structure in the center of the cottage-like houses: a tavern, undoubtedly. A crowd was gathered there—what must have been the whole colony, several dozen in all. They seemed to huddle together, staring at the tavern doorway as if the monster they so feared was waiting on the other side. At least I know where he is, she thought.
Gwent started towards the tavern and the mass gathered there. All at once, she felt fingers tighten around her forearm, a sharp tug haul her back, and hot breath against her ear—breath stinking of ticker and barberry.
“You an’ y’ur friends might swindle the rest of ‘em into trustin’ you, but not me, herdsman.”
“Warthen, tha’s enough—” Ives began, but Gwent shushed him with a raised hand.
“Believe what you want,” she murmured, the fingers of her free hand snaking tight around the dagger under her cloak, “But the Dour act out of concern for all species, even ours. As their servant, I too am—”
“Fuck you and y’ur Dour!” Warthen erupted. “And fuck the Fulcrum. We wan’ no part of your precious alliance.”
“And no part has been forced on you,” Gwent answered, her voice as calm as ever, despite the ball of fire pulsing in her breast, “Which is why you continue to dwell in the filth of these mangled worlds you call home.” There was a moment’s hesitation, where each stood poised, waiting to see if the other would make the first move. Gwent felt Warthen’s fingers loosen, and she jostled her arm free. She continued on as if nothing had happened. Ives released a pent-up breath, and hurried to keep up. His footsteps were the only sounds that followed her to the tavern.
As she approached the crowd, pale faces slick with rain and fear turned to meet her. Mouths fell open, and words, whispered and grumbled, travelled thickly between them. Gwent caught only snatches of what passed back and forth: words like ‘human’ and ‘herdsman,’ and ‘human herdsman’ in stiff interjections that sounded like questions. They parted like a trickling stream around a defiant stone in a riverbed, shuffling sideways to make room—not for her to pass, but for them to escape. It was only when Gwent came up to the shabby, wood-plank door that they spoke to her, as if all they needed for courage was the offer of their enemy’s backside.
“Gotta lot ’o nerve wearin’ human skin under tha’ herdsman’s cloak!” someone shouted, and it was that shout that seemed to unleash the true torrent of the stream.
“Traitor! Wha’s it feel like to turn on y’ur own kind?” came a woman’s indignant yell.
“Are all humans slavin’ for the Fulcrum where y’ur from, or just the niggers?”
It was a hubbub of noise verging on a riot by the time Gwent opened the tavern door, except she knew they were cries of fear at their root. Humans were angry and hateful, sure, but it was fear that drove them to such things. Fear of the ‘Beastlians’ that roamed their forests, haunted their lands, murdered their families; fear of the Beastlians that came from the sky and slinked into their taverns. And indeed, she was not the first Beastlian to have done so that day. The other was there, too, standing at the bar while Gwent stood at the door.
Edwood like any man that belonged to the Chilleptis species. His was a humanoid figure veiled in coral-pink carapace rather than flesh, standing nearly a head taller than her. He was one of what humans called ‘crawmen,’ on the few occasions they bothered to distinguish between Beastlians. Only the pink of Edwood’s face was visible beneath his herdsman’s cloak: spiny cheekbones, jagged lips, and glistening, black-in-black eyes. His cape and tunic bulged with thick muscles made thicker by the firm layer of crustaceous armor plating of his exoskeleton. He was tall by human standards, but, looking at him now, he seemed the smallest man Gwent had ever seen.
As she watched, Edwood was leaning across the counter, his right hand scrounging around the shelves beneath. His hand came up with a pint-sized beaker, and he proceeded to peel the spigot from one of the many unmarked tankards beneath the counter. He held his beaker beneath the ensuing flow of mud-brown liquid, filling his mug to the brim and spilling trickles down the sides as he stuffed the plug back into place. Edwood hovered beside the counter, slouched and silent, sipping quietly at the stained beaker. Gwent roamed to the center of the room occupied by vacant tables stinking of sweat and sour stains. She paused meters from where he stood.
Something is very wrong.
“You know,” Edwood said, in a way that could have been but an outward thought, “If you hold your nose and imagine you’re chugging your own piss to stay alive, this human stuff’s not too bad.” His voice was low and strong, with the usual indications of the Chilleptis tongue poking through: hard Cs that clicked together too violently, and S’s that seeped out in whispers. He extended the mug, his eyes not meeting hers, staring instead at the wall beside the bar. Gwent approached, took it from his hands. She sniffed at the foaming liquid, screwed up her nose, and handed it back without a word. “Smells like tineburrow toxin, doesn’t it?” Edwood murmured, swirling the contents with a steady motion of his arm before giving it a sniff himself.
“The toxin’s less likely to kill you,” Gwent said. Edwood continued to stare at the wall, nodding in slow acknowledgement. “What…” Gwent began, the words coming in a sigh, “What are you doing?”
“The simplest way to gather information is to befriend the local inhabitants,” Edwood recited monotonously, “If you have enough coin for a drink, you’ve enough coin for a friend.”
Gwent turned left and right, one hand on her hip as she considered the dark, empty tavern. “Cute,” she said, forgetting to smile.
Edwood did smile. The grin seemed as distant as the look in his eyes. It slowly faded. “It’s the one promise I made to myself,” he said, all at once returning her gaze and standing straight, as if some misplaced part of him had been rediscovered in that moment, rebuilding the Edwood she knew. “A taste of every planet I visit, a drink for every contract. Or have you forgotten?”
Gwent had never condoned this habit of his, but she understood it. Hopping the Vast could leave a body lethargic, a mind foggy—especially a long flight to the Fringe. A stiff drink could get the nerves tingling again. But, as far as she was concerned, reliance on anything other than loyalty to the Fulcrum and faith in their own ability was a dependency herdsmen couldn’t afford. She didn’t allow that dependency in herself, and she certainly didn’t like it in her pupils, regardless of whether they were beyond her tutelage or not. “You could’ve waited,” she said. “You could’ve finished the contract and shipped off to one of the cities, one big enough to have a dry-dock. They, at least, might have some imported goods. It’s a bad idea to eat or drink anything that sprouts from the Fringe.”
Edwood paused, his mouth hanging open, then forced the words out in a snort, as if to cover up his hesitation, “That would defeat the purpose,” he said, and Gwent had the distinct feeling that it was not at all what he had meant to say. “Besides, I don’t like the taste of the city—human cities in particular,” he went on. “Beer, liquor, or a good red, none of it can escape the taste of metal machines in metal buildings, bottled, sealed, and shipped like liquid Embriate. Too much process ruins a good drink.”
“Thought you said it tasted like toxin,” she smirked, motioning to the beaker in his hand.
Only it’s not really like tineburrow toxin, is it? Gwent realized with a start. The drink smelled a little less bitter, a little more sour—by a margin nearly intangible even to her. She wouldn’t have noticed it, just as he hadn’t. Except she had smelled it once already since coming to that planet…
“Give that here,” she said, stealing the beaker from the hand of a startled Edwood before giving it another go. “It’s not tineburrow,” she murmured, handing it back, “It’s ticker.” Edwood raised a curious brow, but said nothing. “One of the colonists was thick with the stench,” she said, thinking of Warthen. And how curious it is that this was this cask Edwood tapped.
“As are many colonists, I’m sure,” he shrugged, sipping absently at the mug. “Can’t be much variety among their self-brewed liquors.”
He meant nothing by it, she knew, but the words seemed a slap of rationality across her cheek. He’s right, of course; I’m getting ahead of myself. Don’t know anything, yet, though it’s time I remedy that.
A grimace twisted Edwood’s lips as he drank, and he slowly set the beaker down on the counter. “The priestess was right, it’s certainly an interesting tang,” he muttered. The expression on his face was a long way from convincing Gwent that he was enjoying himself. “Remarkably flammable, ticker is,” he added, a faraway look in his eyes. “Why is it you’re so interested in the stuff?”
Gwent stared at the mug sitting on the counter top. I don’t know, she thought. “Something in my gut,” she said.
It was true enough. Something about the drink and its smell, and Warthen and his smell, had her belly churning. But that wasn’t the only thing bothering her. Gwent had a sick feeling, the same kind she imagined she’d have if she did share that human drink with Edwood. Herdsmen were supposed to be easy to read; they were only ever focused on their contracts. For the first time since she could remember, Edwood was not. Edwood had his ticks, but this was different. He now seemed, dare she think it, distracted. That was more than enough to make unease settle in her stomach like that bad liquor he was so fond of.
“So, have you learned anything?” she asked.
“I’m learning right now,” he said. “You can know a people by the hardness of their liquor, humans especially. Their drinks tend to match their temperament.”
Gwent snorted, but couldn’t hide her amusement. “Is that what they teach herdsmen these days?”
“No,” Edwood grunted, snatching the beaker up once more. “I learned that from Farrakhan.”
Gwent grimaced at the name. “Taking lessons from humans, now? Did he leave you any other tidbits of wisdom before you put a bolt through his skull?”
Edwood smirked. “I sense a nonbeliever. Laugh if you want, but his wisdom sure explains you.”
Gwent’s eyes narrowed, and Edwood sipped at his mug. “Meaning?” she asked, her tone icy.
Ticker-scented liquor sprayed across the counter as Edwood cackled. Gwent rolled her eyes. “That’s exactly what I mean,” he chuckled, patting the front of his cloak down. “You’re more like him than you know.”
Gwent’s hand slipped to the hilt of her chalys-knife. “Careful who you compare to dead men,” she growled.
“Easy, Gwent,” Edwood said, turning serious. “It’s a compliment, whether you take it or not.”
Gwent brushed away the fireball of anger. He’s not himself.
“You spent a lot of time with Farrakhan while hunting his Projection,” she inferred.
“Didn’t know it was his Projection at the time; neither did he. If he had, I imagine he wouldn’t have requested a herdsman’s aid.”
“Maybe I should’ve been there with you,” she murmured, wondering what other damage still lingered beneath Edwood’s chitin plate, waiting to surface.
Edwood shook his head. “Why? You had your own contract to see to, and I took care of things just fine.”
“Yes, I saw the reports,” Gwent intoned. “A bolt through Farrakhan’s temple. And thirteen to his chest. He was a human, not a scag; one would’ve done the job.”
A silence overcame them as Edwood drank, paused, and drank again. “I had to be sure,” he murmured.
“Thirteen shots is anger, Edwood. Hatred, even.” Maybe something else altogether. When no answer came, Gwent sighed, and decided to try a different approach. But she couldn’t keep the derision from her voice as she asked: “So what does that drink tell you about these people?”
Edwood shrugged. “It tells me they’re unpredictable.”
She rolled her eyes. “Seemed plenty predictable to me.”
“You haven’t met that doctor of theirs, yet. He’s an interesting man.”
“Doctor?”
“An interesting man,” he repeated absently. “Ran into him when I first got here,” Edwood said. “Doctor Martin-something. Be careful around him.”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
He shrugged again. “Still…be careful.” His eyes left hers, as if dismissing any further conversation.
Gwent considered him, and decided to leave him be, for now. He was fine when we were in orbit, aside from his usually vices. Either the drink’s done him in, or that doctor did something… She sighed, promising herself she would properly berate Edwood once they had returned to Ulta Messa. Whatever the case, looks like I’m on my own. She left him there, readying to leave, but paused at the door. “Gonna track down this ‘Beastlian’, see the thing for myself. Coming with?” she tried, knowing full well what his answer would be.
He shook his head, his back still to her. “I’ll question the locals while you’re gone. See what I can gather.”
“Yeah, buy them a few more drinks. Should do the trick,” she said, forcing a smirk. Edwood raised the mug to his lips and took a sip, and her smirk left as quickly as it had come.
Gwent pushed the door open to find the mass still waiting outside. Only now they were gathered in a crescent behind a single figure, a middle-aged man standing stiff between her and them. He was smiling a smile that looked like it hadn’t left his face in the sixty-or-so years belonging to him. It looked as plastic as hers had felt while speaking to Edwood, a replica of emotion that remained through sorrow and through anger, to the point that it never truly meant anything, even in the times of true joy.
Gwent didn’t like him.
“Herdsman,” he greeted, inclining his head, the grin widening and yet more plastic than ever. “Allow me to officially welcome you to the colony of Baláv. I am Doctor Martin Howland.”
Gwent looked him up and down before returning the bow, murmured, “Fulcrum’s favor, Doctor.”
Disgruntled murmurs arose from the congregation, but the doctor’s smile merely broadened, without seeming to move at all.
“It’s time we speak, herdsman,” he said. “In private.”
Edwood felt the darkness on him again. Parasites weren’t so easy to kill, he found, and this one was going to take him to the grave. He thought he had shrugged it off for good; but now, with his feet on the solid ground of Thalus, the Priestess Gwendolyn’s words echoed back to him—from across the mountains, from across the plains of field and space. He guzzled at the human drink as if to drown her voice in the ticker-scented poison.
“Is something the matter, Edwood?”
Gwendolyn’s words reverberated in his head, defiant amid the flood of alcohol. He could see her now as he had seen her then, her figure of scarlet robes…
He had to squint to make her out in the darkness. Her gray skin was lost in the shadows, while the robes flowed like a cataract from her shoulders to the floor. There was little more to see, but he enjoyed looking nonetheless.
A fortuneteller is what a human would’ve called her. Or maybe a seer? He wasn’t sure. Humans were so queer about their nicknames. Either way, he and his kind preferred a more reverential title.
“Edwood? What’s wrong?” the priestess prodded, speaking over her shoulder.
Edwood blinked, looked away. “Aren’t you supposed to know? Or do you ask as a courtesy?” he replied, pretending he hadn’t been staring. He couldn’t see her smile, but he heard it in her voice.
“You know that’s not how it works.”
Edwood’s eyes followed the swish of her cloak, and still she did not turn to face him. He looked away again, shrugged. “It’s them,” he said, kneading his hands together the way he often did around her. “They’ve been getting onto me about my tinkering, again.”
“Again?” the priestess murmured, she herself tinkering with something at the far end of the room.
“Told me I had to knock it off, that it was stupid and dangerous. They said I was gonna get myself killed, or at the very least stranded. Stranded and then killed, in all likelihood. ‘Worse still, I’ll have tampered with Fulcrum property,’ they told me,” Edwood snorted. “Listening to them talk is like chomping down on a steel spoon. Makes my teeth ache.”
The priestess Gwendolyn at last turned to face him, her gown stirring around the naked feet somewhere beneath. “And you believe that’s the real source of the Assembly’s concern?” she asked. “The property?”
His eyes narrowed in mock suspicion. “Are you analyzing me?”
The priestess hesitated. “You have a traumatic occupation, Edwood.”
“So you’re a psychotherapist now?”
“More of a friend,” Gwendolyn answered, “A friend you happen to come to for guidance. So in a way…”
“Well then,” Edwood continued, “On and on they went. All the while I kept thinking to myself: if our fate is predetermined, how could my tinkering have even the slightest impact on my future?”
“Do you really believe that, or are you just recounting what you’ve been told?”
“I’ve heard it all my life.”
“That’s not really an answer, Edwood,” she replied, dimples crinkling her cheeks as she smiled. “It’s okay. Some herdsmen have a hard time wrapping their minds around the concept.”
“Does it matter if I do?” Edwood asked. “It’s like that Raulthahir bastard the other day, the one that fell from his craft while flying half a kilometer above the citadel. If he had stopped believing in gravity right then and there, would he be anything less than a stain on the side of the street, now? Laws are laws, whether they come from the Mother, or the Shepherd, or something else entirely.”
“Not all creatures believe in what must be. ‘Some things aren’t known until brave men try,’ ” Gwendolyn cited.
Edwood started at the phrase. “Dangerous words from a dangerous man,” he murmured. “Farrakhan was one of the most powerful humans I ever met. But he wasn’t one of the brave men in the end.”
Gwendolyn considered him, that smile still playing at her lips. “What makes a brave man, do you think?”
Edwood gave a hesitant shrug, “I suppose fate takes courage out of the picture, doesn’t it? That’s why I see you before my contracts. It’s easy to leave if I know I’m coming back, and so far you’ve got a perfect record. That’s good enough for me.”
“Of course that’s not what you said to the Assembly when they started scolding you, is it?”
“I’m bitter, not stupid,” Edwood answered. “I understand they’re more concerned with the property than me, but if it’s meant to happen, it’s gonna happen, right? I know their whole rant: it’s a delicate machine, paid for by our citizens to protect our citizens. Tinkering with it is irresponsible. Thing is, after taking out Farrakhan…” he sighed, “I guess I feel a little entitled. That human was the worst of the worst, and I’m the one that got him. You’d think I’d get a vacation or something; instead I get an earful because some tech’s afraid I’m gonna scuttle my engine!”
“What you did was nothing short of heroic,” Gwendolyn placated.
“I don’t think the humans see it that way,” he snorted. “You can never convince them of what’s for their own good. They think they know best, but they don’t even understand their own Projections. The power they’ve tapped into…” the words slipped away as he stared into the near-miss of a future his actions had evaded. “Farrakhan needed to die,” he murmured, coming back to himself. “He was breeding unrest like a screwrat in heat, and knew it all the while. Pardon the phrase, Priestess,” he added hastily, and Gwendolyn shrugged it away with a wave of her hand. “He would’ve destroyed the Assembly, if he’d had his way,” Edwood went on. “He would’ve destroyed us all.”
“Then it’s a good thing fate had other plans.”
The priestess’ stare was piercing, unblinking, and Edwood had to avert his gaze. He knew she had read the guilt in his voice. The remorse.
“So they rewarded you with pontification,” she said, her expression reshaping itself into one of sympathy, “And you told them, ‘yes sirs, won’t happen again, sirs’?”
Edwood forced a smirk, grateful for the change of topic. “Doesn’t sound like me, does it?” he intoned.
“What did you tell them?”
Edwood pried his palms with his thumbs, as if molding clay. “I told them I’m compulsive. I get anxious, sometimes, you know? When I get stuck on a contract, I walk back to wherever I set down. I pace around my craft, thinking about the clues I’ve gathered, the tidbits of information that somehow all fit together to form a picture. On a particularly complicated job, the picture’s blurry, nonsensical.
“Then, before I know it, I’ve pried off the maintenance hatch, and my hands are up inside, searching and fiddling. I take the engine apart and put it back together, and then I do it again. It’s like each mechanical piece represents one of the questions swirling around inside my head. Each piece is a clue that makes up a larger whole.”
“It’s like the Fulcrum,” Gwendolyn murmured, “A whole, consisting of lesser wholes.”
“Sure,” Edwood grunted, ignoring the Dour equivalent of spiritual mumbo-jumbo. “It’s only by examining each piece that I can understand the finer details, and when I put it back together again, suddenly the whole picture’s in focus. Suddenly, it all makes sense.”
The priestess offered a slow nod. “You know it’s compulsive behavior, and yet…”
“Knowing it’s compulsive doesn’t make it any easier or any less useful, so why should I stop?”
“I understand,” Gwendolyn murmured. As she approached, Edwood studied the texture of the floor over which she glided like a swan over tranquil waters. There was no texture at all; it was smooth glass from one end to the other. But beneath was sand, particles and particles beyond count. Edwood was seated cross-legged on the glass, with a small table hovering in front of him. His eyes roamed upwards as the priestess lowered herself to the floor on the other side. She sat straight and taught, returning his gaze. “It’s a dangerous job, hunting humans and their Projections,” she said, “And that’s what you’re really here to ask about, isn’t it? Not to discuss their scolding or your tinkering.”
“I guess you really do have the gift,” Edwood groused, earning a gentle grin. “What other fortunes do you have for me, Priestess?”
“Hold out your hands and we’ll see, herdsman,” she said. “Good, now close your eyes.”
But his eyes had already shut, and his lips sealed just as tightly. He knew this routine as thoroughly as dismantling his craft and its engine. He felt the priestess’s fingers come into contact with his flesh: eight points of life, cold against his palms. He knew Gwendolyn was seated, eyelids a chasm apart, eyeballs rolled up into the back of her head until only the whites showed, trembling in the otherwise stillness of her body. But he preferred not to think of that—that tremble, as faint as a candle’s flicker, yet unnatural. Supernatural.
And so he waited in silence.
‘Any moment now, she’ll suddenly stop,’ he thought. ‘She’ll release my hands and say…’
Edwood frowned, waited.
‘Any moment now… She’ll stop. She’ll release my hands.’
An itch of unease tickled at his throat. And still there was only silence.
‘Fulcrum’s Favor, what’s taking so long? Any moment now…She’ll stop…She’ll let go and say—’
Gwendolyn’s hand lifted from his, and in the absence of her touch he felt more alone than he ever remembered feeling. He heard the soft swoosh of her robes as she stood, and he opened his eyes, stared up at her as she turned away, watched the sparkle of her cloak shimmer and reflect the dull ambient light. Edwood coiled his fingers against his palms; he could still feel the coldness of her touch there. The ambience, dull as it was, played across her ash-gray skin, shining against the perfect curve of her polished head. As far as Edwood was concerned, she was the very essence of Dour beauty, as unattainable as perfection always was. Staring at her was usually a welcome diversion. Now, for once, it wasn’t enough to distract him from what he knew was coming.
‘Why must beauty be cursed with such tidings?’ he thought, then wondered why it was for her he felt sympathy.
“I think we both know what I’m going to tell you,” Gwendolyn murmured at last.
“You’re the priestess, not me,” Edwood said. But he felt his heart hammering away in his chest, growing louder with each passing moment. It was coming, the words every herdsman heard eventually.
“Edwood,” she said, and somehow the personal use of his name was contradicted by the ritual tone that came with it, “Your time has come to meet the Shepherd. He waits for you in the Fringe, on the planet Thalus.”
Edwood choked down the dry lump in his throat. “And where he leads, no one returns…” he recited in a rasp. Edwood closed his eyes until he felt the rhythm of his heart dwindle. “Looks like I’ll get that vacation after all,” he murmured, his eyelids flickering open. “Don’t suppose you can tell me how it’s going to happen?”
“If I could,” she said, “would you really want to know?”
Edwood opened his mouth, then shut it again. “If I can’t change it, what’s the point, right?” Gwendolyn offered what might have been a sympathetic smile, but Edwood took little notice. Instead, he cleared his throat. “Well,” he began, “You don’t have to be a Dour priestess to know what I’m going to ask next.”
She turned towards him, eyebrows perked in disbelief. “Even now?” she asked.
Edwood forced a grin, “Especially now. If it’s going to be my last contract, I’m gonna make sure I enjoy myself. So, where do I look, priestess?”
Gwendolyn’s lips twisted in a half-smile. It was no secret that herdsmen were pitied, by the priestesses most of all. Few would choose their life. Their only blessing was that it was usually brief. And Gwendolyn, in her mercy, could look ahead in time as simply as a person gazes at the ceiling after waking from a slumber. So she did.
Her eyes rolled up into her head. This time it lasted only a second, and then she was back, staring at him. “In the tavern at Baláv—your contract city, if I’m not mistaken?”
Edwood nodded, “If you can call it a city.”
“Behind the counter, there’s a row of unmarked casks. The left-most cask, that’s where you’ll find what you’re looking for.”
Edwood conjured up the image in his mind, picturing the counter and its contents as the priestess described. “You’re sure it’s the one?” he asked.
“Have I ever misled you?”
“I guess not. But if it’s going to be my last drink, I want to be sure…” he trailed off.
“It’s a human liquor, locally brewed. You’ll find the tang particularly interesting, trust me,” the priestess said.
This time, Edwood’s smile was genuine—sad still, but genuine. “How do you do it?” he asked.
“I don’t take your meaning.”
“The Dour see the future—everyone knows that—but how do you know what my liquor’s going taste like before I taste it?”
Gwendolyn hesitated. “You want the truth?” she asked.
“Are you saying you’ve been lying to me this whole time?”
“It’s quite simple, really,” she said, a look of nonchalance smoothing the timid grin from her lips. “I fetched your future, Edwood. I watched you choose a cask to drink from; I watched you poor the liquor from the cask into a mug; I watched you drink from that mug. And I wasn’t the only one watching you.”
“You weren’t?” he asked. “Ah, let me guess…”
“Gwent was there—”
“Lucky me.”
“—Do you know what you said to her?”
Edwood shrugged, but he found himself leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. “What?”
Her lips twisted into a grin, “ ‘The priestess was right, it’s certainly an interesting tang.’ ”
Edwood eased back. “Oh.” For a moment, he was silent. Then, “By telling me all this, aren’t you running the risk of changing my future?”
“Your future? You’re becoming too much like the creatures you hunt, Edwood. You know as well as I do, you don’t have a future to change. Time is one of the cosmic constants. We stand no more a chance of changing the future than we do the past.”
“So I’ve been told my whole life, but how do I know unless I try?”
“And I encourage you to try, Edwood—it’s what you herdsmen are good at—and you’ll come to understand. We are sentient, but we are mortal. We view the life of the universe on a cosmic calendar, as a vast history leading up to the present, but only to the present. An infinite being capable of stepping outside of time altogether would see the past, the present, and the future as a single moment—all of history, the stories written and yet to be written, occurring at once. What we as mortal beings often fail to realize is that the events of our lives have already played out, eons ago; we’re just waiting to catch up.”
“When you put it that way,” Edwood mumbled. “Suppose I tapped a different cask, though—just suppose?”
“And run the risk of missing out on what you’re looking for? You’re the one that said it was an interesting tang.”
“But I haven’t said it yet, now have I?”
The priestess smiled at that. “You have because you will. Or was what I saw and heard a lie? Would you lie to your partner? Would you lie to me?”
“Maybe not to you.”
The smile faded from Gwendolyn’s lips, and from her voice. “If you want to go into your final contract with the illusion of choice, Edwood, no one will hold it against you. After receiving their final fortune, many herdsmen suddenly find themselves devout followers of free will.”
“Don’t suppose any of the them ever come back?” Edwood tried, but the look on her face was answer enough.
“If the universe is a stream,” she said, “we are tiny droplets joining together to give it its form. As individuals, what difference do we make? The stream still flows in our absence. It will still flow if you try to swim against it.”
Edwood sighed. “Then there’s nothing more to be said.”
“If you wish, I could look ahead and see if there is?” the priestess intoned, a smile playing at her lips once more.
“My brain hurts enough already,” he murmured, rising from his seat. “But thank you, priestess. For everything.”
Gwendolyn offered an incline of her head. “Your partner is waiting outside. If you would, send her in on your way out.”
“My partner,” Edwood snorted, “I’ll do you a favor and make sure she never finds out you called her that.” With a nod, he started towards the door.
“Edwood,” the priestess called. Edwood paused, looked back at her, and realized it would be the last time he ever did so. In her eyes, he saw more despair for his coming fate than he could muster for himself. “Good hunting, herdsman,” she murmured.
He had left her chamber wishing he never looked back. Even now, that wish clung to him like a drowning man. Edwood upended his mug in an attempt to flood the drowning man, lest he share his fate. “The leftmost cask…” he growled as he planted the empty beaker firmly on the countertop, and the growl eased into a chuckle. “One part of the prophecy fulfilled,” Edwood murmured.
He was less eager for what came next.
Gwent’s eyes swept from one end of the white-clothed tent to the other, the interior of which was dominated by a long, wooden table overspread with splinters. A jumble of hypodermic syringes and what looked like an ancient chemistry set rested on top, the glass tumblers and tubes coated with glittering dust. Closer to the edge of the table rested a marble mortar and pestle set. A fine, grainy substance rested fitfully at the bottom of the mortar.
“What kind of wood is this?” Gwent asked, eyeing the tabletop and the splinters that poked out like splayed fingers.
“Pine. Used to be a lot of it in this area,” Doctor Howland answered. “Don’t they have pine where you come from?”
Gwent shrugged, “Looks more porcupine than pine.”
“Afraid so. No doubt you saw the state of the forest on your way here. Those trees aren’t worth the mud they cling to.”
Gwent nodded slowly. “I had a similar thought.” But not about the trees. “You’re the authority around here, I take it?” she asked.
“Those of us who seek sanctuary in the Fringe do so to escape authority,” he replied. “I answer to no man, and no man answers to me.”
“But these people look up to you, consider your opinion above their own.” Not because they want to, she thought, but because it’s easy. Easier than forming their own opinions, easier than making their own decisions. Sheep always follow something.
Martin shrugged, “I’ve earned my place here, herdsman. If they so wish to hold me in such esteem, that is their prerogative.”
“I’m right in assuming you’re not from here, then?”
“Straight to the point, aren’t we?” For the first time, the doctor’s smile seemed genuine. “It’s a courtesy among our kind to trade names before accusations. I don’t expect you knew that, seeing as how you clearly weren’t reared by your own kind. Your partner, however, has more courtesy than you. Edwood, was it? Though he begrudged me his surname.”
“He prefers ‘of Ruggenall,’ ” Gwent offered with a smirk, “though any name will do. ‘crawman,’ ‘Fulcrum filth,’ or just ‘herdsman,’ if you’re feeling civil.”
“No family names among the Chilleptis?” the doctor queried, ignoring the jibe.
“He was too young to remember his when they took him. And seeing how they were herdsmen, there was no reason to ask.”
“I see,” he murmured. “And now that you’re done dancing around the original question, what do I call you?”
“I can think of a few names that would do,” she said, straight-faced. I do so love to dance, after all. “I heard a few choice ones outside the tavern just now.”
“And if I’m feeling civil?” he asked, sounding anything but, yet his smile never erring.
She held out for a pause, then relented. “Gwent Masani, as if it makes any difference to you.”
“Old enough to know your family name,” he noted.
“Older than most that were enlisted. Lasted longer than most, too.”
“Talented all around, aren’t we? Must’ve been strange, a human child taken in by the Fulcrum. Surprised they chanced it, the herdsmen especially.”
Gwent felt her lip twitch, but she managed to kill the grin before it bloomed. “On the contrary, the Fulcrum’s been trying to take humans in for decades, doctor. But some children never grow up, it seems.”
“I imagine you believe you’re one of the ones that did? One of the chosen few who’s grown to see the truth?”
“Guess that’s one of my talents, too,” she said. “Just like my talent to tell you don’t belong here. These might be your people, but you don’t belong to them. Certainly don’t speak like they do.”
Doctor Howland gave pause, then admonished, “I like to believe I’ve developed some hint of an accent in all my years out here. Alas, the signs are too many to conceal; there’s no hiding it.”
“If you’re not from Thalus, then where?” Gwent asked.
“Of course I’m from Thalus.” Gwent realized the look that must have crossed her face, for the old man chuckled. “There are civilized settlements even in the Fringe—cities of wealth, both material and intellectual. It’s a human trait, to make the best of what we have; not to settle for the fate given us, but to forge the one we want. Thalus is pockmarked with many such cities—cities like New Dantos, where I was brought up.”
Gwent nodded slowly. A thought struck. “What about the fat man, Warthen? He’s not from here, either.”
Martin raised an eyebrow, his eyes narrowed as they searched hers. “What a curious thing to say.”
“Don’t believe me?”
Martin was silent for a moment, and Gwent realized that though his eyes were seeing her, the mind behind them was someplace else entirely. “I wouldn’t know,” he murmured at last, shifting in his chair as if he meant to stand but his body wouldn’t quite follow through. “Warthen was already in Baláv when I arrived—almost a dozen standard years ago. I never thought to question his birthplace.” But Gwent saw something in his eyes, the spark of the hammer striking the anvil. She had struck upon something, something that Martin himself had only put together just then. “Why is it you believe Warthen to be an outsider?” he asked.
Gwent shrugged, pretended not to notice whatever it was that she did not yet understand. “At first, he seemed to fit right in with Fringe-world humans. He has that irrational hatred for off-landers, herdsmen especially. Only his hatred is too…” she hesitated, and Martin chimed in:
“His hatred is too much. Warthen’s anger gets the best of him at times, and he’s fiercely protective of his family—his colony—where outsiders are concerned, especially.”
…too forced, she amended as he rambled. “It’s normal for humans to hate herdsmen. Only, herdsmen have never been to Baláv,” she said, knowing the old man understood the implication of her words. “And the Dour, they dwell only on Idyll and Ulta Messa. Most humans don’t even know what they look like, let alone give a scag’s squirting shit how their politics affect the universe at large. Warthen hates them, even more than that human irrationality gives him sanction to.” Or, she thought, he pretends to.
Gwent wondered, by the expression on the old man’s face, if she had said too much. Martin Howland was not the barbarian she had learned to expect from the Fringe planets. He was no witchdoctor.
“Is hatred a crime, herdsman?” he asked, in a tone hinting that she need not answer.
“It’s that hatred that’s mucked everything up for the rest of us,” she answered anyway. “Every known sentient species has allied itself with the Fulcrum. Every piece plays its part; every individual understands its own function. Only humans slap at the hand reaching down to lift them from the mud. The hand of the Dour is still extended, doctor, but you’d rather clamber in the dirt like swine than soar like the beasts of the air.” They stared at each other for what might have been only a moment, before Gwent registered the tautness of her muscles, the lock of her jaw. Slowly, she dropped her shoulders. “Why is it that humans have to be coerced into giving back to the universe that has granted them so much?”
At first, Martin simply stared back at her. “Is this why you hate us?” he asked.
“Hate you?” Gwent smiled. “A shepherd doesn’t hate his sheep.”
“And a hunter doesn’t hate his prey,” he growled back.
“If it weren’t for humans, I’d be out of a job, and there are few things I love as much as my job. I hop the Vast every day. I hunt monsters for a living—”
“And men.”
“You do this as long as I have,” she said, “sooner or later you realize there really isn’t any difference.”
“But there is a difference, herdsman,” he intoned. “Unlike monsters, mankind contributes to society. Even out here, we can’t escape your tariffs and taxes. A portion of our personal production goes to our leaders in the cities, and a portion of their production supports the Fulcrum’s economy. Even out here, we can toil until we curse the very land that supports us, and still the parasite will take what it thinks it has the right to demand. We contribute to your existence, one way or another. Your kind makes certain of it.”
There was bitterness in his words that struck Gwent, not as a surprise, but as the first piece of a puzzle falling into place. “Contribute, do you? Good,” she said, “You’ve just proven I’m not wasting my time here.”
Martin straightened in his seat. “Meaning?”
“Social contract, doctor. You do your part, I do mine.”
“So humans aren’t the only ones who need to be coerced, hmm?”
Gwent crossed her arms to keep from slapping the grin from his face. “Believe what you want; it doesn’t change the fact that I do my job, and I do it well.”
“It’s reassuring to know you’ll carry out your task without bias, herdsman,” he intoned with a hint of amusement seeping out from his plastic lips.
Gwent shrugged. She knew they were both considering whose fate pivoted on the fulcrum of her bias. “I’m here to investigate possible crimes with possible culprits, and I’m here to see to the subsequent punishment. If Warthen gets in my way…”
“We live free of authority, as I said before. You’ll find that—in Baláv and anywhere on Thalus—the arm of the Fulcrum’s law will not reach as far as you’re accustomed.”
“You don’t answer to authority, sure—not until children start dying, and spirits start haunting; then it’s your arm that reaches for the closest adult it can find.”
Martin grew quiet. “Yes, well,” he sighed, “This is a thing beyond our control. I have yet a few contacts in New Dantos. When I realized what we were facing, I collaborated with them to send a plea to the Fulcrum, hoping your Astral Assembly would send someone our way. I’m still wondering at the wisdom of that decision, but my pride comes second to the safety of my fellows.”
“Your fellows mentioned a Beastlian. I had a tussle with a beast, but didn’t get a good look at it before driving it off. What is it, exactly?” she asked, though she already had a notion.
“A Projection of some sort, if my years in academy have not eluded me. I understand herdsmen are supposed to be the…authority on such things.”
“You know about them, then? Not many humans do.”
“When I was an undergrad at New Dantos Academy, Projections were but a rumor. And how that rumor spread,” he said with a satisfied sigh. “Representations of human emotion, given physical form. Their existence was scientifically unfounded, impossible even. Much as it is now, no one understood them; many refuted their existence altogether. But it was a rumor that liked to spread. It gave us hope—beasts born from our minds, to act out our desires for us, to stand against those that would hold us down.”
“Until they started attacking your own kind.”
“We gave up on them long before that,” the doctor asserted with a shrug. “Projections were only rumors—rumors that first began popping up before I could even stand on two feet. None of us ever saw them with our own eyes. We heard of them over the galactacast and lightwave broadcasts—attacking distant, solitary colonies with names that meant nothing to us. After a while, Projections became something for bow-tied aristocrats to discuss at their dinner parties, and symbols of hope for naïve students who believed the beasts were the key to a rebellion against the Fulcrum. But if projecting was an ability of the human species, none of us seemed to understand how to control it. So, rumors they remained.”
“Until now.”
He nodded, “Now that I live in a solitary colony with a name that means nothing.”
Gwent folded her arms, leaned against the rickety table, felt the splinters clinging to her cloak. “You understand what this means, don’t you? That’s why you haven’t told your people what the beast really is,” she asserted. “A Projection is always tethered to the person who created it. The Projection can’t be killed while the projector lives.”
Martin’s lips stretched taut against his cheeks, and he offered a slow nod. “And this is the herdsmen’s excuse to be ‘hunters of men.’ ”
“Humans are partial to their nicknames,” Gwent leered. “ ‘Herdsman’ will do just fine.”
“Herdsman is fitting,” he murmured, “Herdsmen steering the sheep to the killing-pen.”
“I don’t lose sleep over the sheep’s destination. Sooner or later, we all meet the Shepherd.”
“Yes, herdsman,” he said, his gaze fixed on her, that incessant smile playing at his lips, “Your Shepherd waits to usher us all to our graves—humans and Fulcrum alike. And here you are, the Fulcrum on human soil. Doubly dangerous, wouldn’t you agree?”
“We all have our allotted time, doctor,” she replied, matching his tone, staring cold indifference back at him, “I don’t plan on dying until I’ve fulfilled my purpose.”
“Purpose,” he echoed, “Perhaps you’d better see to that sooner rather than later. After all, the Fringe is a dangerous place. Accidents happen with dreadful frequency. You might be surprised how many are taken before their time.”
They stared at each other. “Whoever’s responsible, whether the Projection was intentional or not, I’ll cut them down without hesitation as soon as I know.”
“No, we’ll take care of the culprit ourselves, with honor, as a family. If you can’t adhere to that one rule, then you’re wasting both of our time. All we need you to do is reveal the offender to us. Do that, and we’ll tend the rest—”
“With honor?” Gwent snorted. “You think these people will honor the man who’s responsible for the death of their children, husbands, mothers?”
“So certain it’s a ‘man’, already?” Martin exclaimed. “You have someone specific in mind? Or maybe you’ve finished your investigation altogether?” Gwent glared at him in silence. The old man had an irritating tendency to understand what was unsaid as much as what was. “I do trust you will be impartial in your judgment, herdsman,” he urged in a tone suggesting there would be consequences otherwise.
“I’m here to do a job, doctor, one I’m very good at,” she reiterated. “The offender will be handed over for you to do with what you wish, if that’s truly what you want…”
“Yes?” he prodded.
But if it is Warthen, she thought to herself, I make no promises to what state you might find him in. Instead, she said: “Nothing.” The glint in her eyes discouraged any further debate, and Martin offered a gentle incline of his head.
“You know,” the doctor said as she turned away. “Baláv is my home, these people my family. But being the smartest sibling loses its luster after a time. Under different circumstances, I believe you and I could have a very interesting conversation—more interesting than I’ve had in a long time.”
“You mean to say that you don’t wish me dead, like your colonists do?” she scoffed.
“I hope to see you hang by your own cloak when all is said and done. But,” he sighed, “There are two kinds of hatred in the universe, that born from ignorance, and that born from knowledge. Theirs is the former, but I’ve always held hope that my family might learn from my example. I don’t hate you for the color of your skin, herdsman. I hate you for who you serve.”
Gwent paused at the entrance, turned her head just enough to stare at him from the corner of her eye. “Afraid we’ll have to save that conversation for another time, doctor.”
“A time when you’re not trying to kill a member of my family, and I’m not trying to stop you?” he said, his grin turning sad, yet enduring.
Gwent’s lips twitched in a half-smile. “Your kind I’ll never understand. A creature that lives its whole life in the dirt should have no qualms dying in it.”
She turned from him and slipped away.
Gwent was outside, slogging through the mud once more. She expected to spot Warthen glaring at her from a distance, but he was nowhere to be seen. The colonists had thinned out, some perhaps escaping to their hovels, some going on about their daily business. A handful gathered in tight clusters, discussing mysteries as they shot frightened eyes towards the forest, towards the tavern, and towards her. Like litter on the muggy wind, scraps of conversation flitted close enough for her to snatch up as she passed by.
“Damned trees’re deader than ol’ man Tythen,” a crooked-looking man with a bulbous nose was groaning to two younger men. “Not a single bushel o’ fruit’s sprouted all season.”
“Jus’ the other day, I had to march all th’ way to that grove eastways of Brigh’water Downs, jus’ to pick some apples,” one answered, “Bit into one an’ nearly lost m’breakfast. Rotten to the maggoty core, ev’ry las’ one o’ them!”
They fell silent as she passed, heads on a swivel as their eyes followed her. She passed between a pair of huts, heard a man from another group grumbling:
“Them ore veins crawl on f’r miles. I never see’d such’a blasted network o’ tunnels. An’ for what? Embriate ore for the Fulcrum? Why’s we gotta break ‘r backs swinging picks? So the cities c’n prosper? What’ve the cities e’er done f’r us?”
“Let the Beastlian haunt them mines, I say. They ain’ brought us nothin’ but trouble.”
“If it tweren’t for the children, I’d agree with you.”
Nodding heads and mumbles of ascent faded as Gwent walked on.
A man crossed her path, dragging a hoe behind him. “Firs’ the downpour, then you show up, ‘erdsman,” he grumbled her way. “How’s we supposed to work the fields with the mud suckin’ our boots right off ‘r feet, hmm? I’s an omen if e’er I saw one.”
“How’s that?” Gwent asked, unable to help herself.
The man seemed startled at the question. He considered her, frowning. “Nothin’ good comes with th’ rain.”
Gwent raised an eyebrow. “Crops, perhaps?”
His frown stiffened. Straightening to his full height, he squished a finger against his left nostril and snorted a strand of yellowish snot from the other. He turned away without another word.
Gwent considered him as he walked on, the jagged hoe dragging through the mud behind him. These people and their enmity, she thought. It was hatred, not like the hatred they felt for the alien overlords they had never seen with their own two eyes, born from superstition and stories passed down through generations; not a hatred born from the abstract burdens of their taxed toil that flew from wagons to trains, to far cities like New Dantos, to be carried off to other, farther cities, only to eventually hop the Vast and land in the laps of the distant, faceless demons that ruled the universe. This hatred was different. It was a hatred for their own labors—a hatred whose root was experienced first-hand, by the sweat of the very same hand; a hatred for the tool that broke from too much toil, for the fruit and the trees that bore it, for the ore to be mined, for the fields that provided the food on their tables. It was a hatred for the very land on which they dwelled—hatred for their own existence, whether they realized it or not.
As Gwent walked on, she found things were beginning to make sense.
She stopped at the sound of a woman’s grief. Between two hovels, staring out at the surrounding forest, a group of women—what must have been the majority of those in the village—stood looking on the forest. One wept openly while two others comforted her with hushed words and arms around her shoulders. Gwent approached, slowly. One of the women looked back at her, a young face betrayed by tired eyes.
“Anything I can do?” Gwent asked.
“Not unless you c’n bring back th’ dead, herdsman,” the woman said.
Gwent nodded towards the weeper. “What happened?”
“My sister’s son, Edric, wa’ taken in th’ night. Vanished wi’out a trace, killed by th’ Beastlian, jus’ like the rest.”
“Has it taken many children before now?” Gwent wondered.
The woman gave a slow nod. “Edric was th’ last for it to take.”
“How can you be sure the children are dead?”
The weeper wailed anew at that, and Gwent winced at the ruckus. “It’s been hauntin’ us for weeks. If none o’ th’ young’uns ‘ave returned by now, they ain’t gonna.”
Vicious, even for a Projection, Gwent thought. “Any of the fathers want revenge on the beast?” she asked.
“What’d you care if’n they did?”
“Because I need a guide to wherever the Beastlian’s been seen—one brave or stupid enough to take me.”
The woman stared at her for a long time, until Gwent was ready to turn away. “I’ll take ya’, herdsman,” she crowed.
Gwent hesitated, looking her up and down. “It’ll be dangerous,” she said.
“This is th’ Fringe. Ever’things dangerous.”
Gwent offered a slow nod. Man or woman, neither was likely to come out alive, anyway. “Then whenever you’re ready,” she intoned.
The woman nodded, patted the weeper on the shoulder, and started towards the forest. Gwent hurried to keep up. “What’s your name?” Gwent asked as the bony branches began to overtake them.
“Serai,” was the curt response.
“Serai,” Gwent repeated. “I’m—”
“Don’ much care what to call you,” Serai interjected. “Martin claims ‘e was lookin’ out for his family when he sent tha’ message askin’ for ‘elp, but not all his family agrees. We don’ trust you, herdsman, and cer’ainly not y’ur Fulcrum.”
“Understandable, I suppose,” Gwent said, ducking beneath a low-hanging branch as she trotted along behind her. “The Fulcrum’s only trying to help. The Dour—the mother species of the Fulcrum, you could say—they’re trying to accept humans into the fold. Your people don’t make it easy.”
“Try all ya want,” Serai muttered. “Humans don’ put blind faith in forces we don’ un’erstand.”
Gwent smiled at that, a callous smile that was her equivalent of a roll of the eyes. “Sure you do,” she said. “You have granaries, don’t you?”
“Y’ur on your way to ‘em now.”
Gwent nodded. “You store feed in a granary, but where does that feed come from?”
“Toil an’ hard work,” Serai intoned, “I’m not shure I take y’ur meanin’.”
“You work the land,” Gwent expounded, “but that land is cultivated long before it’s harvested. A farmer, like any man, woman, and child, faces a choice. What’s to stop him from gobbling up his seed, serving it to his family the same way he slings chow to the hens? It’s faith in the harvest—that the weather will be favorable, that the crops will flourish. A farmer sacrifices the absolute that he holds in his hands today, for the promise of what comes tomorrow.”
“Th’ laws o’ Nature are diff’rent than the laws o’ Beastlians,” Serai answered after a pause. “The Mother’s a’ overlord whose rules are just.”
“The laws are precisely the same, Serai,” Gwent said. “The sooner humans realize that, the better off they’ll be.”
With Gwent’s words, their conversation heaved its final breath, and she allowed her wandering eyes to search the barren forest. As they wound their way deeper, all was silent, and Gwent became painfully aware of Serai’s stamping feet, squeezing into the mud like two signet seals surging monotonously onto a waxed envelope. True to Pertheon form, Gwent barely displaced the brown sludge at all as she trod, slinking ever closer to the impending Projection and its lair without a sound. There were herdsmen of the heftier variety that spent their whole lives learning to travel as she did. But this was a grace natural to her people.
Upon entering the forest she had noticed a single line of footprints hashing through the mud on a course parallel to their own, but far to her right, almost beyond view. There were old prints splotched between new ones, and she considered them from the corner of her eye without much interest. Maybe the colonists trekked to the granaries or the mines from time to time, even with the Projection lurking about? Gwent was doubtful, but there was still toil to be toiled, after all, no matter how much they hated it. But why a single file? she wondered. It was only when that trail came to an abrupt end that it really caught her interest.
“Stop here a moment,” Gwent murmured, staring off at where the line of footprints disappeared. Serai followed her gaze, her brow crinkling in question. Not the sharpest eyes, have you? Gwent thought. Not as sharp as mine, at least. “Wait here,” she said, starting towards the anomaly. Despite her command, there was no mistaking the squishing footfalls as Serai followed her.
“Why bother t’ ask f’r a guide if’n y’ur just gonna wander off on your own?” Serai snorted. “There’s nothin’ out here—jus’ dead ol’ trees and mud for miles. The trees start t’ look th’ same after awhile, truth be told,” she rambled, her tone growing only more busy the longer Gwent ignored her. Finally, Gwent could tell Serai had stopped following altogether. “Keep wanderin’, herdsman; see if I care. Good luck findin’ your way back.”
“Don’t imagine I’d have much trouble,” Gwent muttered.
She, too, came to a halt, in the same place as the single file of footprints. They tramped right up to the base of a stumpy, white-barked tree. Serai was right, Gwent thought, the trees really do seem identical after a while. Except this one had something none of the others did. A crevice was dug into the mud, revealing a cobweb of roots that ran under the tree. Lodged between those roots was a small bundle of cloth. Gwent tugged it free.
“What have we here?”
Serai, Gwent noted, still lingered nearby despite her terse threat—perhaps just as curious as she was.
The cloth was coarse and neatly folded, concealing something tiny and stiff within its folds. Several somethings, she realized, running her fingers over the rough fabric. She didn’t have to open it to know what it was. The aroma materializing from her fingers was poignant and sweet—sugary enough to make her nose burn, her stomach churn—though it would’ve been pleasant in a smaller dose. Barberry twigs.
Last time she had smelled that, the scent had been choked out by ticker, wafted around on the shoulders of a certain fat, belligerent colonist.
“Wha’s in the pouch?” Serai asked reluctantly.
Barberry, growing out here? Gwent wondered, barely registering her existence. A luxury for hopeless romantics, and a mood-setter for cheap brothels the universe over. She had never heard of the small, aromatic flower sprouting on Fringe worlds. Looking around, she couldn’t imagine anything sprouting. Must have come from somewhere afar off. Maybe somewhere even farther.
Something else caught Gwent’s eye, and she sidestepped around the tree. On the far side, the mud had been flattened, indented in patches of varying size—some looked as if they could be shallow footfalls; while the largest was nearly as wide as the tree’s base. One large indent with smaller indents all around. Someone was sitting here, Gwent pondered. Then, after a long moment: and someone was sitting on top of them, facing them, their knees digging into…
Oh.
“Looks like we found someone’s dirty secret,” Gwent said, grinning—a clear picture of who that someone probably was, if the barberry was any clue. Never would’ve pegged Warthen as a romantic.
“Only thing dirty ‘ere is the mud,” Serai said, but the words sounded hollow.
“Don’t look any closer, then,” Gwent uttered through her icy smile, “Some of that mud is stained white.”
Serai’s lips twisted in a snarl—of disgust or anger, Gwent wasn’t sure.
How far is the village from this little love nest? Far enough, I suppose, she thought, glancing in the direction of Baláv. Not many colonists would dare come out this far with the Projection still on the loose, not unless they had to. Gwent considered the mushed earth. Fucking in this muck. These people really are the filth of the universe. Then another thought occurred to her. Why hide it at all? If Warthen was involved, why come all the way out here to do the deed?
“Well, I didn’t hop the Vast just to track down a couple of rough-housers. Come on,” Gwent asserted, stuffing the cloth and its contents back where she found it. She was relieved to find the smell dissipating almost instantly.
They doubled back to their old trail, neither speaking as they did so. They trudged on, Gwent smiling to herself at the lonely squish squish of Serai’s heavy boots. Before long, she could see a clearing ahead, meandering ever closer to meet them. Between the trees’ wriggling, twisted arms, Gwent could see the tall wooden shacks that were the granaries towering in the open ground. The duo marched into the clearing, and Serai paused, swinging a cautious gaze from one end to the other. No monster in sight, Gwent thought with a sigh, and Serai started forward once more.
There were six granaries. Standing perhaps a meter above the mangled trees that surrounded them, they were little more than shacks on stilts to keep the vermin out. The ragged timber was whitish-gray, splotched with dark smears where some moisture still lingered from the recent torrent. Bales and loose piles of straw rested behind, beside, and sometimes inside in craggy tufts. Here and there, wires of dead grass poked from the mud in tussocks. Serai led her to the centermost structure and stopped just outside the door.
“This is where you last saw it?” Gwent asked, looking the building up and down. Serai gave a slow nod of her head. There were no clear signs that the Projection had passed that way, Gwent noted; no damage to the granary, no forced entry. The flimsy door hung open on its hinges, looking like a frail wind could scoop it up and carry it off if Thalus would only muster up a breeze. “You’re sure?” she confirmed.
“Ask anyone,” Serai affirmed.
Projections are attracted to what their creators hate. So what’s so special about the granary? Gwent stepped past Serai, brushing her shoulder as she stared in through the opening. That was when she smelled it. Faint, old, shrouded in the stench of sweat, but there nonetheless. Unmistakable.
Barberry.
Gwent’s mind rifled off warnings, even as she hoisted herself up and into the granary. Serai smelling of that rare smell; Serai volunteering to lead me out here; Serai standing silent ever since I found that secret meeting place. Serai standing silent right now, just outside the door.
The back of Gwent’s neck tingled. You don’t die today.
Whatever it all meant, Gwent figured she had the upper hand, even now as she stood in the dark enclosure of the granary packed with spools of grain. She was a herdsman, after all.
Gwent bent down, pretending to study the floor, her back to the entrance. Her ears were rigid and wide open, just waiting for Serai to make her move—whatever that move would be. Her heart thudded in her chest, then in her ears. One hand rested on her hip, a hare’s hairbreadth from her blade. Her skin danced and her muscles tensed, so much so that she nearly sprang through the ceiling at the sound of Serai’s voice.
“You ever love someone, herdsman?” Serai murmured in a queer tone that drew Gwent’s full attention, drew it to a pair of glassy orbs wide and staring at something that was most definitely not the interior of the small, muggy granary. The woman’s eyes were fixed above Gwent’s shoulder, open and breathing with life, but not seeing. “Love—I mean love-love? In the way where the man’s in y’ur dreams as often as he’s in y’ur wakin’ mind? Maybe you’re mindin’ y’ur stitchin’ or y’ur huntin’, or whate’er it is lady-herdsmen do, and there he is, stampin’ around inside y’ur brain in a way no person’s got the right to? Love, herdsman—where you’d lie an’ cheat an’ kill if it meant life for you an’ him?”
Love, Gwent thought, with a painful twist in her chest. Sure. Never a man, but— “Sure,” she murmured, prodding the woman on, because that strangeness of her voice and the distant mysteries those unseeing eyes were so clearly envisioning told Gwent that this woman wasn’t dangerous, not really. But she knew something. Just like Warthen knew something; just like Martin did.
It was then that Serai stepped back and, with a thunderous squeal, the door slammed shut. Gwent made no move to stop it. She stood where she was, hearing the wood crash against wood, a man’s muffled breathing on the other side, and the sound of the latch clattering into place with a heavy snick. It was pitch black, save for a strip of milky, overcast sunlight blaring through a crease in the door. But Gwent had already spotted her escape, long before the door had washed away the outside world. She crouched low and shut her eyes, relinquishing the unnecessary sense of vision, and focused everything she had on everything else.
“Do it!” the man’s voice hissed.
Warthen’s voice, Gwent noted. He was out here waiting for us, all-alone. A shame Serai didn’t mention it. I would’ve come sooner.
Gwent felt thin shafts of wheat squishing beneath her boots. She kept her balance with a hand to the floor as she crouched, her fingers taut against the wooden slabs’ sandpaper texture. Her fingernails scraped against the tattered, dusty wood; she felt the dirt gathering between skin and nail. There was a squirming of movement beneath her, not human at all: vermin hovelled in the soggy, shaded mud provided by the granary. There was the sound of a fire being struck to her left: a tearing, wavering sound of flame billowing to life, enveloping the oil-soaked head of a torch. She listened as the flame came nearer.
Soft footsteps smothering tufts of miry grass, moving beside her, just beyond the wall. The footsteps stopped behind her, and a little to her left. The torch sputtered as it was jerked about; then, a shriek, and the torch tumbled to the mud at the back corner of the shack. There’s straw back there, Gwent recalled, just as the flames swelled with a sound like tearing notepaper. The fire was eating up the straw, spreading to anything within reach. In her minds eye, Gwent could see flames whipping at the side of the granary. A moment later, she was bombarded by the smell of smoke. She could already feel the heat rising behind her.
“Y’ur alright?” Warthen’s muffled voice asked.
The other didn’t speak; Gwent imagined a swift nod of her head.
“No burn; the flame scared ya’, is all,” Warthen said, and their feet carried them away as he spoke.
Two colonists—Warthen and Serai. The question is, she thought, do they act on their own, or is it their ‘family’ that put them to it? The former, she hoped. Otherwise, Edwood would be in serious trouble.
But that was a thought to hold onto for later. The heat was already suffocating—the fire raging both outside and inside the back corner of the granary—and a door still blocked her escape—a threadbare door that would take but a moment to bypass, but a door all the same. A roar like thunder filled her ears as the fire spread.
She drew the dagger and shifted on toes and fingertips towards the door. Her free hand slid up and down the inner crease where the hinges were tacked into the flaking trim. The fire was rising behind her, warming her backside. Gwent could feel the rust, a moist powder on her fingertips. She felt the detached hinges—most of their screws long missing—dangling from the inner wall. She slipped her blade between the lower hinge and the trim, and snapped the hinge off with a single grunt. The door groaned as it shifted free, and the top hinge squealed as it held on for dear life. The fire was a roar in her ears, now, and Gwent sent the door tumbling away with a swift kick. She followed suit, dropping down into the clearing.
Her eyes fell to the ground, where her shadow danced in rhythm with the fire’s tantrum; she noted the fresh sets of footprints that squished their way back towards the village. With the immediate danger behind her, she stood there, tightlipped, considering her options, considering her leads. All this way, and nothing, she sighed. Monsters everywhere I turn, but not the one I’m looking for.
Warthen, Gwent scowled, he’s part of it. And Serai, his willing assistant—his lover, in point of fact, willing to share in his hatred of my kind. Or trying to hide something. The thought held meekly to the back of her mind. But what was there to hide? Lovers, afraid the foreign hunter would spoil their secret? Could they be so foolish, risking the lives of their so-called family just to keep their infidelities buried in the mud? Why?
Whether they acted alone or not, she knew if the two returned to the colony, Edwood could be in danger. Gwent sighed and stretched, twisting from side to side before reaching forward and touching her fingers to the toes of her mud-soaked boots, while behind her the roof of the granary collapsed into a smoldering heap. Righting herself, she started towards the colony at a brisk march, and almost immediately stopped short.
The footprints are wrong. The mud was displaced with each impression, as the two pairs stumbled side by side on their way. One pair was Serai’s—she’d know those elephantine craters anywhere. And yet Warthen’s…
She bent over for a closer look, found the sight no less confusing up close. Warthen’s prints were larger than Serai’s, longer and broader. But shallow. The stamp of Warthen’s boots were little more than an outline, with the toe just cutting into the mud’s surface. Warthen might be more agile than he looks, Gwent thought, but he’s no ballerina. Next to his, Serai’s prints look like a full-grown scag came rampaging through. Gwent stared hard at the shallow indentations in the mud, frowning. Then she realized, her brow furrowing in confusion, that she had never heard Warthen’s approach. All her senses honed for danger, and Warthen had walked right up to the granary without her ever hearing.
Gwent didn’t have the chance to think about what it meant. Somewhere beyond her line of sight a twig snapped, and she froze, bent at the waist like a piece of parchment folding in on itself. Something was moving amid the dead shrubbery, far to her right—something that’s not afraid of being heard. Slowly, she righted herself, a hand at her hip.
It was waiting for her beyond the clearing, standing among the bony trees of the skeleton forest. She hadn’t realized before how tall it was; it would’ve dwarfed Edwood by a head, easily. The Projection was humanoid, but as far from human as she or Edwood. It was naked, blanketed in matted white fur smeared with mud. The snout protruding from its face was like that of a hound; whiskers poked out from either side, somehow reminding Gwent of the table in the doctor’s tent, splayed with so many fingers, ready to poke, ready to draw blood. This beast looked like it wanted to do worse than that. The Projection returned her stare, one of its glossy black eyes clinched shut by the pinkish scar searing across its face. And at its chest, a fist-sized knot of fresh scar tissue where her chalys-knife had done its work.
Gwent readied for it to charge. The beast’s lip curled on one side, furling up to reveal a row of jagged teeth, and the fire in its eyes seemed to demand a swift punishment to the stranger in its domain. It moved, and Gwent’s heartbeat quickened. But the movement was the swing of its shoulders as it turned away, the rise and fall of its legs as its paws stomped into the mud. It paused long enough to glance back at her, and that fire was still blazing behind its eyes, but it jerked its head as if beckoning her, demanding she follow. But Gwent knew better.
She did, didn’t she?
Projections didn’t act like this. They didn’t act. They attacked. If this was a trap, then this Projections was the first in Gwent’s many years to show any sign of conscious thought. Gwent, despite herself, was curious.
She followed.
The beast tramped between the trees, slowing only to glance over its shoulder, to assure that the huntress was still following. Gwent locked eyes with it each time it turned. She kept a distance between them, but the Projection seemed appeased by the mere fact that it had her in tow.
Before long, a spiny cliff-face rose up to meet them. The scrawny trees of the forest butted up against the gray stone. Man-sized crevices had been chiseled into the dark rock, and darker cracks splintered out in all directions like branches from a willow. Ore veins, long exhausted. Must be the Embriate mines, Gwent surmised. Pickaxes and chisels were tossed gracelessly around the opening. Rudimentary tools for rudimentary people, she thought. The miners left their work in a hurry. After seeing the Projection up close, she could hardly blame them.
Gwent paused, straining her ears to hear. There were voices. Muffled, far-flung, coming from inside the mines…
Ahead of her, the Projection twisted sideways and sidled between the walls of the largest crevice, squeezing its way inward with low growls and grunts. No way I’m following it in there, she thought with a grimace. She placed her hands on the crevice walls, staring into the darkness within, feeling the glistening, uncomfortably warm moisture against her palms. Bowing her head, she placed one foot inside, then another. Beneath her feet, the mud turned to dust-coated sediment, intermittent with loose pebbles. She made much easier progress than the Projection.
The passage was as dank and dark as it had appeared from outside. Gwent could hear the Projection ahead of her, its paws shuffling in the blackness, its snarling breaths echoing against the walls, seeming to surround her. Then, all at once, Gwent realized she could see a shadow ahead of her, a divergence in the path, and some faint source of illumination. The voices she had heard before were now louder and more distinct. Voices. Whispered, high-pitched, and broken up by…giggles?
“I don’t believe it,” Gwent murmured, not realizing she had said it aloud.
Turning with the veering of the path, she found a warm light glaring through, momentarily obstructed by the Projection’s hulking frame. The Projection squirmed through the final stretch of the passage, and stepped aside, allowing the glow to fully encompass her. Gwent shielded her eyes as she covered the few remaining steps and shifted into an open chamber.
A single lantern atop a cask bathed the expanse in cozy firelight, no doubt left behind by the miners. But Gwent’s eyes quickly passed over the light source, finding interest instead in the mine’s occupants. There must have been two dozen at least. They tittered in and out of the lamplight with giddy excitement. They were children, all of them—playing in the darkness, unabashed by the towering beast and the stranger that had accompanied it into their home.
“What is this?” Gwent asked, but the Projection merely looked at her, then turned its attention back to the children.
Instead, another voice answered—a child’s voice. “This is all that remains of the innocence of Baláv.”
Gwent quickly saw that it was no child at all. The figure emerged from among the group of giggling kids—or did it materialize? It was a girl, so far as Gwent could tell, but she had to strain her eyes to be sure it was really anything at all. The girl had a queasy way of shifting between solidity and transparency, like dust particles drifting through a sun ray, scintillating between existence and nonexistence. One moment she was as clear as day—a child standing before the hunter—the next moment transparent to the point that by staring through her, Gwent could make out the silhouettes of gleeful children on the other side. Gwent had the distinct sensation of gazing into a pool of water. It was like being confronted by her own reflection, only to realize there was another face staring back at her from somewhere beyond. It was a feeling not altogether unfamiliar, and not altogether agreeable.
An ethereal Projection. As rare as an intelligent conversation on a Fringe world.
With the Projection shifting into a semi-opaque state somewhere between the two extremes, Gwent examined her more closely. A once-white gown hung from her shoulders to her knees, smeared with mud—and Fulcrum knows what else—exposing two pasty arms and mud-caked feet. Sticks and twigs clung to her matted hair, perhaps as much an apparition as she was. At the peak of her skull, the greasy strands gave way to antlers, weaving aside to make room for the dirt-colored burs. The antlers poked out of her head like offshoots of a hackberry. The two shafts stood straight, one branching into progressively narrower forks; the other was shattered at the stem, leaving but the bur protruding from her hair.
Brow tine, bay antler, royal antler, surroyal antler… Gwent counted, considering the stem still intact. Missing but the crown, assuming it follows the patterns of fawnraven and scag anatomy…
“They’re real, herdsman, if that’s what you’re wondering,” the girl intoned. “As real as I am.”
It speaks, Gwent realized with a shudder. Intelligently.
“Eidolon Projections are as real as the rest, I suppose,” she murmured, combating a feeling of panic, a hammering in her chest that she struggled into submission.
They’re evolving.
“You…” Gwent hesitated. Fulcrum, where do I even begin? “Do you know what you are?”
The girl nodded. Not a girl, a thing, Gwent reminded herself, a fact that seemed to blur in and out of focus when chatting with one of the damned things.
“Projections…” the girl murmured, crinkling her nose. “I knew that’s what you called us, of course, but it’s strange to hear the name spoken aloud. It doesn’t seem…right. That’s not the name that escaped with me from the womb, when my creator birthed me.”
“You have a different name for yourself?” Gwent waited, but the girl seemed to hesitate, then refuse any reply whatsoever. Gwent asked, “You know what I am? Why I’m here?”
A second nod.
“Ethereal Projections are rare,” Gwent said, changing the subject, unnerved by the understanding in the thing’s eyes. And you’re even more rare. She spoke softly, forcing her voice to retain the silky-smooth composure of the Pertheon. “We call them Eidolon. That’s what you are. I haven’t seen many like you, and I’ve been at this a long time. Too long, in fact. My eyes are getting old, you see, and looking at you is making them ache something terrible. Why don’t you lay off that ethereal shimmering if you can, and we’ll have ourselves a talk?”
The girl’s lips perked into what could have been a smile, and her transparent form bloomed into a solid figure. To Gwent’s relief, she remained that way.
Two Projections, Gwent considered, glancing sideways at the silent, hulking beast before returning her attention to the girl who stood but waist-high to her—ignoring the single splaying antler. Could mean one incredibly powerful, intelligent projector—the doctor being the most plausible—or it could mean multiple projectors…
“Never met a Projection that could speak.” Gwent nudged her head towards the fur-coated beast, “He must make for enthralling conversation.”
The girl offered a slow shake of her head. “Eli was born of hatred. He knows nothing else, including speech.”
“Eli?” Gwent spouted. Name doesn’t fit the hulking creature in the least. And who named the thing to begin with?
“A name makes anything less frightening,” the girl said, as if in answer.
“And Eli frightens you,” Gwent discerned.
“He did,” she shrugged, “at first. But his hatred isn’t for me.”
“It’s for the people who created him?” Gwent asked, then answered the query herself. “No. If it was, they’d all be dead by now.” The girl smiled, and Gwent thought there was a slippery slyness to it. “Hatred for my kind?” she wondered, considering the brawny Projection, who glared back at her wordlessly. “He’s certainly not fond of me.”
“You are here to kill him,” the girl intoned, and the beast shifted at the words, growling from deep inside its throat.
Reluctantly, Gwent’s gaze passed from Eli to the girl, and the children playing behind her. “What about them? You’ve kept them alive this long, clearly. How are you feeding them? No stores were missing from the granaries.”
“The granaries feed the others,” the girl agreed. “Fortunately, Eli travels fast on foot. He knows where to find food—other villages and farms—but those places are far away. Eli must leave us, regularly, so that they can be fed.”
“In between killings, I suppose?”
Eli released a growl at that, its eyes locking with Gwent’s.
“Sheathe your blade, herdsman. He won’t attack you here,” the girl said.
Her dagger, Gwent found, had in fact escaped from its sheath without her realizing. Slowly, glaring back at the larger of the Projections, she lowered the chalys-knife back into its cradle.
“How many has Eli killed, do you think?” the girl posed. “When he attacked the mine, none of the men were harmed. They all returned safely to the colony. And the children he supposedly murdered?” She gestured to those behind her. “Eli destroyed their places of toil—mines, fields, and crops—nothing more. He fulfilled his purpose: to destroy the work of their hands.”
“To save them from a hard days work, more like,” Gwent said, folding her arms. “His purpose is clear enough. The question is: where do you come into all this?”
The girl cocked her head to the side, like a hound considering a curiosity. “Is that your only question, herdsman?”
Gwent shrugged, “I’m awfully curious to know who projected you, of course, but that’ll come later. Chances are you don’t even know the answer to that.”
“I know only what my creators know—nothing more, nothing less.”
“And there’s a meager chance he or she even realizes you were created.”
The girl nodded, “Less than meager.”
“I’m guessing the good doctor had a hand in it—you’re too well-spoken to belong to any of the rest. But the two of you, together…” Gwent sighed, looking Eli up and down.
A troubled smile twisted the girl’s lips, furrowed her brow.
“What?” Gwent prodded.
“I didn’t know I could feel sympathy for something I was not created to,” she said. “But you, herdsman, you try so hard. And I feel sorry for you.”
“That so?”
A thoughtful nod of her head, “For all your effort—here and beyond… Well, you’ll see for yourself what it amounts to. The Scagged King is among us, now.”
Gwent hesitated, realized her mouth was hanging open. She locked it shut. The Scagged King. A name she had heard before, and nearly forgotten amid the strenuous path of ticker stench, intoxicated partners, peculiar doctors, clandestine lovers, and Projections. Two Projections.
But she had first heard the name recently, just before leaving Ulta Messa. She had told Edwood about it—told him to be wary…
“He’s here?” Gwent asked.
“He’ll be everywhere, soon enough.”
Not here, then, Gwent thought with some relief. “This king of yours, he’s credited with a series of human uprisings,” she said. “They claim he overthrew the Fulcrum administrations on two separate planets. Reclaimed them for their human inhabitants.”
“And how the people rejoiced at the news,” the girl said, the shimmer of her eyes bringing authenticity to her smile. “All across the Fringe, human settlements celebrated, praising the name of the Scagged King.”
“He’s like a god to you, by the sound of it.”
“Except he’s real,” she intoned. Then, with a dismissive wave, the girl said, “But of course, I can only recount what my creator believes to be truth, as you know.”
“And you’re intelligent enough to understand that,” Gwent noted, shuddering at the thought, not for the first time. “What can you tell me about him? He’s coming here?”
“Coming for all of you, eventually. The Scagged King is a beacon of hope to my creators.”
“Then I best speak with your creators. Ought to have a chat with the doctor, to start. See what he knows about this king.
“But you never answered my question. If Eli was made to destroy, why are you here?” she wondered, staring fixedly at the antlered girl.
“Eli was born of hatred, as I said. I was born of fear—fear for the safety of what my creator loved.”
“The children,” Gwent murmured. “That’s why you took them. But they were never really in any harm, were they? Eli didn’t attack the colonists.”
“A fact my creator did not appreciate. But does that mean there will be no danger to come?” she asked, a note of cynicism in a voice too young to hold such guile. “Baláv is dying,” she said. “The fields bring no harvest; the forest no flora or fauna; the mines no wealth.”
“The colony is killing itself,” Gwent countered.
“And when it is finished, what will happen to the children?”
She shrugged. “You’re taking care of them just fine so far.”
“You’re here to end that.”
Stifling a sigh, Gwent said, “To be completely honest, I don’t really care what happens to them. Like you said, I’m here to do a job.”
“You’re so dedicated to the Fulcrum that you’d abandon your own kind?”
I’m not fucking human—she fought back the response with a bite of her tongue. The question had surprised her. As intelligent as the Projection was, Gwent almost expected it to see through the ruse. “Why don’t you call out to your precious Scagged King instead of bugging me? I didn’t come here to babysit a bunch of Fringe-world brats.”
The girl seemed unabashed, as if she had expected such a response. Her calm unnerved Gwent. But Gwent’s mind soon distracted her from her discomfort, relapsing as it often did into the protective shell of her job. The girl’s purpose, Gwent realized, presented a new hurdle in an already complicated contract.
Doesn’t add up, any of it. “Even if the great Doctor Martin Howland could produce something like you, he doesn’t seem all that concerned about the disappearing children,” she pondered aloud. There was silence as she considered that, broken by the quiet voice of the Projection.
“But you’ll kill Doctor Martin, won’t you? You’ll do it because you have to, just to be sure.” The words escaped the girl’s lips with a strange shudder of emotion. Her eyes seemed to shimmer now with something other than glee.
“You’ve never met him in person,” Gwent surmised, considering her. “Why would his passing upset you so much?”
The girl—thing—looked at her, hesitating. “To you, that’s proof of his guilt? Isn’t it?”
“He’s certainly suspect.” But how I wished it were Warthen instead, Gwent sighed. “One Projection requires a remarkable amount of power and raw emotion to create,” she explained. The doctor seems the most capable of all of them…” But far too calm for such a feat. Her mind began to rumble at the thought.
The chance of one person projecting multiple times is exceedingly minute; the cost is just too much for the human body to bear. And this girl is special among Projections. Not special, singular—beyond the very concept of special. How any projectors could create her and live… she shook her head. None of this makes sense.
I need to get to the source, she thought. Where did it all begin? When did it all begin? What’s the root? The root. Roots…
“What about the forest?” Gwent asked. “Looks like it’s been dead a while.” She gestured at Eli, “Was that his handiwork? Or do you expect me believe the entire region rotted away naturally?”
“No to either,” the girl answered. “That was the work of our brother.”
Gwent took an involuntary step back. “There’s a third?”
“Was,” the girl asserted. “Alzahi—he never gained corporeal form. He was the first of us, a stillbirth. But his presence—his death—left its mark on the land of his creator, as you have seen.”
Gwent considered this, nodding slowly. “The way these people detest the very land beneath them… Alzahi,” she muttered the word slowly, feeling how it rolled around on her tongue. The First. “He would’ve been born of that hatred, created to destroy what they hated most—whoever projected him.” Hatred. So much hatred. “First-time Projections rarely succeed,” she continued, muttering more to herself than to the creatures around her. “Most of the time they die without the human responsible ever knowing it had existed, or almost existed. But then came Eli to finish the job.” The Second. But so soon? “Then…” Gwent’s eyes drifted back to the wraith of a child.
“Me,” the child finished.
So many, in such swift succession. An incredible amount of power. How many colonists must be involved?
“Fulcrum’s favor,” she breathed. “They could all be projecting.”
And Edwood is alone with them.
“I think it’s time I was leaving,” Gwent said, failing to ignore the sudden tightening of her gut. Eli stirred as she turned away, but made no motion to stop her. Instead, the girl’s voice called out, as softly as only a child’s could.
“Herdsman. Please, consider what I said. Without us, these children will die. You claim the Fulcrum is superior to humanity in every way. Are you not part of that Fulcrum—that alliance of saintly races joined together in unity? Would the Dour leave dozens of children to die, their only sin being that they are human?”
Gwent had paused at the opening of the chamber, long enough to hear the girl out. She was done speaking now, Gwent noted, but her legs seemed reluctant to move her. Funny, that. Her throat was coarse, her limbs unusually heavy. Swallowing against the dryness in her throat, she muscled through her paralyzed state.
She left without looking back.
The village was quiet when she arrived. She had followed Warthen and Serai’s footprints, which now merged with a jumbled, hash pattern of imprints and displaced sludge. The paths were empty, the colonists silent—hiding or missing, she wasn’t sure. The only exception was Edwood. The hulking Chilleptis crouched in the mud, his gray-cloaked back to her, tinkering with the underside of his spacecraft.
Fulcrum’s favor, what now? Gwent sighed, marching towards him, her relief at the sight of him turned to frustration in an instant.
“Edwood, where is everyone?” she asked, slowing to a stop a few paces short.
“Your eyes can tell you as much as I can, Masani,” he said, grunting as he bent low, his head disappearing beneath the craft. “They aren’t here.”
“You’re right, I can see that for myself,” she snipped, “So maybe you’d be kind enough to tell me where they went?”
“Somewhere else.”
Gwent bowed her head and massaged the bridge of her nose. “Listen to me, Edwood, this is important. Did two colonists come from the forest just now? Warthen and Serai, did you see them?”
“No,” his voice reverberated back. “Heard them, though. Impossible not to, the ruckus they were making; one of them stumbling and crashing as they went, and the other muttering all the while.”
Gwent straightened. “Where?” she asked. “Edwood, where’d they go?”
He shrugged, “With the others.”
“Where?”
“They’re with the doctor, I think.” Edwood grunted, and a slab of shield plating toppled from the belly of the ship, slapping into the mud with a sticky thud. He stretched until his head disappeared inside the opening.
Gwent rolled her eyes. She had seen this before.
“You do realize how volatile those engines are? Combustibles and chemfuel don’t mix.”
“They mix just fine, if you know what you’re doing,” Edwood mumbled as he tinkered.
“And if you don’t, you might just toss Baláv into orbit.”
Edwood’s neck shifted as if he were nodding. “If I don’t.”
“Might be for the best, actually,” Gwent sighed, exasperated. “Just do me a favor: wait until I’m good and far before you turn this colony into a crater.” And she stormed off, leaving Edwood to his tinkering. The tinkering is a good sign, at least, she thought to herself. Helps him focus, which means he’s on to something.
It was a small comfort during what was turning out to be a very uncomfortable day.
Gwent made her way to the doctor’s hut. Still no colonists were in sight, and no ruckus came from within the tent. To her surprise, Martin Howland was waiting—all smiles, as always.
“There you are, herdsman,” he greeted from his seat, not bothering to look up at her. “I was hoping to see you before long.”
“Find that very difficult to believe, doctor,” she muttered.
“I would’ve gotten word to you sooner, only I had no means to reach you out there,” he said, and Gwent straightened at the words. “Your job here is done, I’m pleased to announce.”
Farthest thing from the truth I’ve heard since I got here.
“We’ve apprehended the offender—the projector, as you called him. So, the way I see it, your contract is fulfilled. You can go—you and your partner—and we’ll all be happier for it, eh?” The doctor glanced at her for the first time, and she guessed by the look on his face that he didn’t like what he saw. “I imagined you’d be more pleased,” he said.
“I’m ecstatic.”
“You should be. Job’s done, either way. Now, you have no idea how challenging it is to keep these people happy when there’s a pair of Fulcrum-lovers stamping about their village. That being said, the sooner you two leave, the better. Angry Fringe-worlders are volatile when angry,” he intoned, his voice dropping. “You wouldn’t want to anger them, would you?”
Steady now, Gwent thought, keeping her temper in check. Play this smart.
“I just find it strange: I was the one hunting the damned thing, and I still haven’t the faintest clue who’s responsible.”
“The man you suspected from the start, I’m afraid. Suppose I should’ve trusted your expertise after all,” Martin said with a laugh.
Warthen summoning three Projections? Sorry, doc. Not buying it.
“What’s odd to me,” she said, “is that Projections often reflect their creator in some way. Sometimes it’s the creature’s personality—what little there is—or it could be something about its physical appearance. Sometimes just taking into account a Projection’s victims can whittle away the suspects. There are clues—sometimes clues that are very difficult to find, but they’re there nonetheless.”
The doctor spoke as if the act was merely one of placation. “And this Projection’s traits—to you—seem to reflect…”
“Anyone but Warthen,” she asserted. And the more she considered it, the more it seemed no individual could possibly be responsible for what was happening in Baláv. Follow your own advice, Masani. Take the traits into account. Who do they point to?
“Do you understand what Projections are, doctor?” she asked, as organically as she could manage.
“I’m a man of science, herdsman. As far as I’m concerned, Projections shouldn’t even exist.”
“Oh? Seems to me humans have always had a way of projecting devastation onto that which they hate. When the first Dour began studying the concept of time, it took them generations to learn how to fetch the future; did you know that? Hatred is as strong as ambition, and your people had centuries more of it to evolve from.”
“Is that the official Fulcrum propaganda, I wonder?”
“A personal hunch,” Gwent said, shrugging. “Truth is, out of all the species that span our universe, not one of us has the slightest clue how to explain you.”
“Once more, a captivating conversation, herdsman. I’m afraid that, in your absence, Baláv just won’t be the same. Speaking of which…”
“Right, I’m going,” Gwent said, starting for the door. She paused, looked over her shoulder at him. “One last thing, though.”
He met her gaze, the forced glee no longer there to see. Gwent mulled the question over in her mind before uttering the words, wondering at the wisdom of it.
“The Scagged King—what can you tell me about him?” she asked, turning to face him.
This time, nothing was fake about the smile that slithered across his face. “He’s no one that would interest you, I’m afraid,” Martin said. “He’s a hero, you could say—a champion from a prophecy of old; a result of human superstition. Some believe his will be the hands that lift humans from the mud. He’ll forge a new alliance of the races, with mankind dwelling at the top—to live as benevolent rulers; to live in freedom. To live in equality.” Gwent turned away as if to hide her thoughts from him. She paused at the foot of the door, feeling his eyes studying her.
“Some say he’s not just a superstition,” she said, tiptoeing her words. “Some say he’s real—living among us right now.”
“There’s no reason to worry yourself about that, herdsman. He’s a small comfort to a small species in a comfortless universe. Prophecies have no place among men and women of science. Someone as pragmatic as yourself, I imagine you put little stock in prophecies.”
Gwent wondered if the smile in his voice was but a play of her imagination.
“Three of them, you say?” Edwood murmured.
Gwent nodded. “One never formed fully. Two did. Of the two, one is exceptionally powerful. She—” Gwent paused, “It was projected to guard the only thing these people hold dear.”
“And the children? What of them?”
“I told you already: the girl’s watching over them—”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” Edwood asserted.
Gwent rolled her eyes, answering with a shake of her head. A breeze had picked up. It blew her cloak listlessly about her, occasionally whipping her cowl against her face. She was staring over Edwood’s shoulder, into the forest. He gazed above hers in turn, arms crossed as he scrutinized the village. Beside them, the Rumbacha Hellion rested, a smattering of its guts still sitting in the mud.
“You ought to finish with that engine of yours.”
“Time to go already?” he affirmed.
“Not just yet, I don’t think.”
“They have their projector,” he said.
“Their scapegoat, more like.”
“And they’re satisfied with that. If they no longer want us here, then our contract is null. Herdsmen serve, remember? You can only serve those that wish to be served.”
Gwent offered a slow shake of her head. “I don’t like leaving jobs unfinished. And this job…it feels like we only just got started. More questions than answers to be found here. And Warthen of all people? Why turn on him? None of it makes sense—”
“Got company,” Edwood growled.
Gwent heard the weeping, then. She turned to see Serai stumbling through the mud, squealing something unintelligible between fits of sobs. “Ye’ ‘ave to help ‘im!” was the first thing Gwent made out. “Warthen—you can’ let ‘em do this to ‘im.” She gasped to a stop in front of them, her body racked with grief and exertion. Behind her, a new addition stood proud on the edge of the colony. A pyre towered above the huts—a single post erected among a jumble of dead tree branches and twigs. Torches lit the colony in the approaching dusk. It was a night for a burning.
“Didn’t you hear the doctor? Warthen’s the culprit here. He has to die,” Gwent said with no real conviction in her voice.
“Only a’ excuse!” Serai flamed. “Tha’s not why they hate ‘im; not why they’ll put ‘im to the torch!”
“Then why?” Gwent asked. “A straight answer would be a nice change.”
“Because ‘e ain’t human,” she sobbed.
The herdsmen shared troubled glances.
“Warthen only looks it. ‘e keeps ‘is collar pulled up to hide it.”
“Hide what?” Edwood asked, but Gwent didn’t need to. Her hand climbed to her neck, skimming deep into her cowl, feeling the skin within—discolored skin, superficial markings that set her apart from the animals that had settled these Fringe worlds.
“Warthen is Pertheon,” Gwent breathed.
“Nobody knew ‘cept me,” Serai sobbed, nodding her head. “We ‘ad to sneak away t’ hide it…”
“Now everyone knows,” Edwood intoned.
“I don’ know how Doctor Martin found out,” she said between sniffles, shaking her head.
“It’s amazing he kept it a secret this long,” Gwent muttered, ignoring a pang that felt something like guilt.
“ ‘e only wan’ed to be like us. ‘e wanted to live free, instead o’ under the rule o’ the Fulcrum. Is tha’ such a sin?”
“There is no sin,” Gwent answered, “only fate—and Warthen’s fate is decided. There’s nothing we can do for him.”
Serai stared at them, wide eyes trailing between the dark skinned hunter and the towering Chilleptis, and back again. Her cheeks shined with streaks of moisture; her lips trembled. “Warthen was right about y’ur kind. Everythin’ he said was true. Pox on you, ‘erdsmen,” she spat. “As Warthen will burn, so too may the Scagged King set your cities aflame!”
She stormed off, her fury dissolving into tears once more. Her shoulders heaved and ebbed as she trundled into the forest. Behind her, the colonists were starting to gather, raucous calls and snide jeers rising up in the dusk light.
“This is what happens when you try to flee from fate,” Gwent said.
“Maybe this was his fate all along,” Edwood murmured.
Flanked by two colonists, Warthen emerged from a hut, hands bound behind him. The colonists dragged him by the arms; his legs flailed in protest as he slid ever closer to the pyre.
“Freedom,” Edwood whispered, shaking his head. “What a wretched fool.”
“Certainly didn’t find it here,” Gwent agreed. “But he’ll meet the Shepherd soon enough.” She shrugged, “A certain freedom in that.”
Warthen’s screams carried across the clearing as they hoisted him atop the pyre, barely audible above the jeers of the crowd. The colonists shackled him to the lone, vertical post, and tied his flailing feet down for good measure. Torch in hand, Doctor Martin Howland approached the pyre. He made no show of his duties, Gwent noted. With a flick, the torch tumbled onto the logs, and the celebration began. They screamed at Warthen as he burned—men and women, all—angry, bitter, and elated screams altogether. Warthen twisted and squirmed away from the rising flames. Gwent’s stomach churned at the sight in much the same way.
“Look at them. They’re only missing pitchforks,” she scoffed at the dozens of faces morphed by flames. They were oceans—each face a boundless sea of fury. But there were droplets of rapture rising to the surface of each ocean, a holy euphoria that rose from the deepest depths at the sight of another man’s penance. It was a darkness all people held inside them, given birth by the flame.
“No,” Edwood groused, “Torches, pitchforks—those they employ exclusively for monsters.”
“Then maybe we should be the ones with pitchforks.”
The fire rose like a pillar, the crackle of its flailing limbs now audible above the jeers and screams. A smell like searing meat reached the herdsmen from across the expanse.
“A hell of a secret to keep,” Edwood murmured. “How many years did he live among them? A day ago he was their brother. Now they’re like a pack of wolves nipping at the heels of supper.”
“It’s a collective persona, a mindless following,” Gwent intoned without much interest. There was a restlessness in her, the kind that accompanied a job unfinished. It was a feeling she hadn’t felt before.
“Any of us can fall prey to that particular devil,” Edwood answered.
“Yet not all of us have. Don’t make excuses for them. If you want to commiserate, save it for Warthen.” They stood there, watching from a distance, as Warthen’s screams carried across the plains of Thalus. Beside her, Gwent noted the solemn stare coating Edwood’s features like a glaze.
“You know what? Fuck Warthen, too,” she declared. “Pertheon or not, he doesn’t deserve our pity. He fled to them; he trusted them. They did what they always do. Sure as the Shepherd, it’ll be an ugly truth they wake up to come morning.”
Edwood nodded slow assent. “If only their problems could be burned away as easily as that.”
“Think they’ll regret it?” she wondered.
“Maybe,” he said with a shrug. “Maybe we should spare them that regret.”
Take them all out and be done with it. Not a bad idea.
“Something specific in mind?” she asked, watching the blazing torrent writhe into the darkening sky. Edwood did not answer. She shot a sideways glance at her behemoth of a partner, watched the fire’s distant flicker shine off the crustaceous shell blanketing his face like armor. “Edwood?” she prodded.
He blinked once, then his voice came in a mumble—distant and monotone. “My first solo contract was on Tarquin. It was a Kellitaca colony, with a human settlement some kilometers to the south.” He drifted off as abruptly as he had begun, leaving Gwent dumbfounded as to what in the name of the Fulcrum he was getting at. “Coincidently,” he blurted, “a Projection had found its way north, and the Kellitaca called me in to take care of it.”
Gwent raised an eyebrow, remained silent.
“It was an easy job. I took care of their problem, and they celebrated with a particularly fiery rumbacha and fresh-boiled makatara.”
“A delicacy in some parts of the Vast,” Gwent intoned. “Makatara’s very popular among humans.”
Edwood offered a slow nod. “Crab, crayfish, crawdad—”
“I think ‘lobster’ is the word you’re looking for.”
“Hardly any difference if you ask me, but humans are partial to their nicknames,” he said with a shrug. “Though if anything deserves that kind of devotion, it’s makatara.”
Gwent turned to face him. “You mean to say you ate it? Verging on cannibalism, isn’t it, crawman?”
“No more than a human eating a rat,” Edwood said with a smile, still staring at the distant fire. The smile twitched, then slipped away. “The makatara scream as you boil them—not really, but it sounds as if…” he trailed off. “It’s the air escaping their shells, squealing from the buildup of pressure. Not really a scream at all…”
“I assume there’s a point to all this,” Gwent urged.
“That’s how it sounds when my brothers burn,” Edwood murmured. “Our Chilleptis plate expands from the heat, until it snaps off of our bodies, taking the underflesh with it. Cracking and grinding and screaming, just like the crawdads… But our screams are real.”
Gwent turned her gaze from him, turned it instead to Warthen, who was now but a black crisp against the pyre. She hadn’t even noticed the silence that had fallen over the colony, the screams long died away.
“Does it feel like we won, here?” he asked. “If what you said is true, their Projections are evolving beyond anything we’ve ever seen. And the Scagged King? Two planets fallen to him already…”
“No, it doesn’t feel like we won.” But the fat man’s dead, she thought. It wasn’t nearly as satisfying as she had imagined. If we wait around much longer, it’s only a matter of time before we join him. There’s too many. Even we couldn’t make it out unscathed.
“We are passive to the whim of fate. They are not,” Edwood said, nodding his head towards the village. “What chance do we stand against the simple act of trying?”
Gwent’s lips parted, but she couldn’t bring herself to speak. After a pause, she asked, “Then you believe they’re right—the humans? If that king of theirs is a real threat, you think they’ll beat us?”
Edwood was silent for what felt like a long time. “I don’t think they’re right, no,” he said, “I still believe the Dour. I still believe in fate. But the Assembly, with all its confidence, and the priestesses, with all their preaching… None of them have ever claimed that fate believes in us.”
Gwent found no answer to challenge the sentiment. She grit her teeth at the thought, felt around for any change of subject. Her eyes fell on Edwood’s craft once more, and the collection of spare parts splayed across the mud beneath it.
“Get the Hellion put back in one piece. Think it’s time this contract meets its conclusion. Or there’ll be two charred herdsmen up on the pyre with Warthen.”
“Don’t think that’s what fate has in mind for us.”
“Sometimes fate favors you because you’re smart enough to make wise decisions—like leaving Thalus behind.” She went to turn away.
“Gwent, wait.” Edwood murmured. “What about the children?”
“What about them?” she snapped.
“I know you; you’re not going to let this rest. Projections are evolving, and Fringe world colonists are pumping them out in some strange collaboration of conscience that even they don’t understand. There’s only one obvious solution here, isn’t there? Wipe out the colony, and the Projections will follow in turn. What do you think will happen to the children after that?”
“Fulcrum’s favor, what would you have me do? The Rake is a herdsman’s craft, not a damned shuttle bus. You expect me to carry them across the Vast one at a time?”
“Is it too much to hop to the nearest city and notify an official? Let someone else take care of it from there. In the meantime, I’ll stay behind, make sure the colonists are taken care of.”
“Leave you to deal with them alone?” she challenged. “You’ll never be able to—”
She broke off, and the final piece of the Thalus-shaped puzzle seemed to fit into place. She understood why he had been acting so strange, and found she was astounded not by the thought of his coming fate, but by the fact she had not seen it sooner. Edwood was looking at her now, a look of knowing on his face as if he had seen the finished picture from the start, all this time just waiting for his old mentor to catch up.
At that moment, it seemed a thousand thoughts rocketed to and from Gwent’s mind. She could only guess that they showed on her face, for Edwood stated matter-of-factly: “I know what you’re thinking.”
Oh, do you?
And Edwood gave a curt nod in answer to that which was unspoken. He knew that Gwent was thinking about the priestesses, same as him. She was thinking that she was promised a contract fulfilled and a safe return, whereas he was promised a joining with the Shepherd. She was thinking that she was prophesied to return from Thalus and continue on to fulfill unknown contracts to come, and that he would never step foot outside the Fringe colony of Baláv again. As with all members of the Fulcrum, Gwent’s fate had been decided for her, just as his had been, and all of it had transpired before they had ever taken their first steps into the world. Just as they answered to the Dour, the greatest of them all, the Dour answered to another. And from that ‘another’ came all of life’s beginnings and ends.
Now here they were. Gwent knew he was right. He did know what she was thinking, because he had experienced all the same thoughts, just as every individual that made up the Fulcrum did at one point or another.
“How will you do it?” she asked, her voice solemn.
“It’s already done,” he answered. “Like you said, combustibles and chemfuel don’t mix.”
“You’re sure it’ll do the job?”
Edwood nodded. “It’s sitting in the tavern right now, next to the very same cask I drank from. Once I set it off, there won’t be anything left of Baláv.”
“You couldn’t set it off remotely?” Gwent asked.
“As strange as it seems, computator engines aren’t built to explode,” he quipped back at her.
Gwent responded with silence, frowning at the thought of it all.
“Doesn’t it seem odd,” Edwood sighed, “that our bodies are conditioned to fight, but our minds to submit?”
She saw no sign of shock in his countenance, just the jagged line of his rigid jaw, and the last glimmer of purpose in his filmy eyes. He doesn’t feel fear, at least. That’s something, Gwent noted. His mind was on his task, on finishing his contract, which meant he had learned something in all those years under her tutelage.
“How long have you known?” she asked.
“That I’d meet the Shepherd today?”
“That they’d be going with you,” Gwent said, nudging her head towards the gathering, “How long did it take you to put it together?”
Edwood’s solemn features at last cracked into a smile. “I don’t recall ever bothering to ask why I was doing what I was doing. I just knew it had to be done.”
“I envy you that,” she said after a pause.
“Has this contract shaken the faith of the great Gwent Masani?” he asked with mock surprise.
Gwent hesitated. “Let’s just say the future doesn’t seem as simple as it once did.”
“I see the contrary. The future is as simple as ever.”
He released a low sigh, and took a step, then another. He left her there, his steps slow and steady, his gray cloak flitting behind him. She didn’t want to leave, she found. It felt wrong. Everything felt wrong. But there was that voice, ever present, penetrating her skull without pause, without remorse.
You don’t die today.
Gwent watched Edwood’s feet tread through mud, watched as he marched towards the village.
She turned away.
By Candlelight 