Authors: Felix Gilman
“Ruth, you’re alive!”
The Beast kept laughing.
They changed places again.
“Enough, Ruth.” The Beast was hard to look at now.
Ruth threw open the heavy slick door of the tent, and the cold night blew in. Wings beat around her head and Flitter’s owl hooted like an engine. A flash of dark eyes—then it rushed past her and into the tent. Behind her, the Beast roared. She turned back again, caught a glimpse of scales and feathers and rending claws, two shadows struggling …
Arjun grabbed her wrist and dragged her out into the night.
“That thing, like a bird—did you do that?” he said.
“No, it’s …”
Outside in the quarry, the Beast’s followers stood in a vague mass. They hovered around the oilcan bonfires like tramps, bony, shiftless, confused. The tent bulged and rippled, and horrible shrieks emerged from it. Flitter, hands over his mouth, tears streaming from his face, ran into the tent, whimpering
pretty girl, please, pretty girl, no …
He screamed once and went silent. Silt—
Ruth thought it was Silt—some bony sexless skeleton in rags and bird-bones—picked up a hammer and dumbly considered its possibilities as a weapon. Arjun held her close and said, “Ah.” Someone shouted and someone else moaned.
E
xcuse me!” A new voice, echoing around the quarry. “Excuse me? Would you all please shut up?”
Down the slope and into the quarry came a little procession of men. They carried guns. They fanned confidently out, spacing themselves around the Beast’s little camp. One of the Beast’s people complained and was knocked efficiently to the floor. The man at the lead of these new intruders approached the tent. He said, “Thank you.” He paused to collapse a brass instrument that might have been a telescope and hand it off to one of his men. He passed by one of the fires and Ruth recognized his smile, his golden hair, his handsome unpleasant face. He said, “We’ll take it from here.”
Arjun let go of Ruth’s arm. He said, “St. Loup.”
St. Loup grinned enormously.
S
t. Loup turned to the Beast’s followers with what appeared to be genuine surprise. “Why are you still here? Things are difficult enough already. Piss off.” They did.
“Good,” he said, and sat on the hood of one of the Beast’s black motorcars. “What a beautiful machine. It has good taste for a monster.” He clapped his hands. “Quick, quick.”
His men surrounded the tent. Who were they? They didn’t look local. They had dark brown skin and neat little ginger beards—an unappealing combination. Their clothes were plain and black and their guns—which they now slung over their backs—were heavy and complicated and distinctly unusual. They pulled strange implements from boxes.
St. Loup wore a loose shirt of shimmering duck’s-head green, open-necked, and beneath it a gold necklace. His own gun, which he began toying with, was a sleek little thing, blue and white, like a bird. The bruise on his temple was fading to yellow.
He saw Ruth watching him, and winked.
She said, “Arjun, who is this?”
“We’re the best of friends,” St. Loup said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Arjun said. “Leave her alone, St. Loup, she’s not important, I’m here for the Beast.”
“Oh shut up. I know exactly who she is. I’ve been watching her for Ages. When I got here the first thing I did was research all your little friends. I may look like a fool but I didn’t get where I am today without doing my homework. When did
you
work it out?”
Arjun shook his head. “Just now. I just found out. It was in the Know-Nothings’ files, but I was busy with other things.”
“Who
is
this?”
“We’re family,” St. Loup said. “Your father made us all who we are. That awful thing, too.” He gestured toward the tent. “I wanted to know what it was going to say to you. Now I know. So now what I am going to do with you all?”
The Beast’s erstwhile followers scrabbled and slipped up the slopes of the quarry and their grunts and footsteps echoed. In the heart of the quarry the tent had gone still and silent. It slumped in the windless night, cautious, turtlelike. Encircling it, St. Loup’s men now brandished a variety of items. One had a dogcatcher’s net. One had an immense hunting rifle, another a crossbow. Three carried what appeared to be icons of religion or witchcraft—a spoked wheel, a cross with a little naked wooden man on it, a big rod with dead birds and rats attached by wire and string. One held what looked remarkably like the cane Brace-Bel used to carry, with its eerily glowing crystal. One had a machine that Ruth simply could not comprehend. It had wires and dials and valves and a glowing green window, and it hummed.
One of St. Loup’s men placed a glass box on the ground and flipped a switch. The box crackled then poured out a cold white light—like the light of the airships. It filled the quarry with a chessboard of shadows, it picked out every line on St. Loup’s face, it banished all mystery from the night.
“I came prepared,” St. Loup said. “After all, there’s no way back. Most of this stuff may be junk but you never know. By the way, Father Turnbull’s dead. I gouged out his eye and slit his throat with my very own hands, and wouldn’t it be hilarious if he wakes in the next world at the feet of his God? So I’m in the market for a sidekick if you’re interested, Arjun. Ruth, I don’t know what I’m going
to do with you, but I’m sure I can think of something. Beast!” He raised his voice. “Come out! I have questions!”
T
he Beast didn’t put up much of a fight. Somehow it made Ruth sad to see it.
The tent shifted, its fabric seeming to swell, and there was a sound of slithering—heavy breathing—the scrape of claws and the dragging of a great tail—and St. Loup said, very loudly, “Tut tut.” His men hefted their icons and talismans. The crystal on the cane pulsed. The mysterious box of valves and dials emitted a low warning throb. Three rifles were cocked.
The noises from within the tent subsided.
A few moments later the Beast emerged.
It came sheepishly out of the tent and into the light. It had some new and some old scratches and bruises, hair wild and sweaty, clutching a red silk sheet around its body. A half-naked middle-aged man, under arrest. St. Loup’s men brandished their strange weapons and the Beast cringed. With a nervous grin it said, “Who are you? My name is Wantyard, sir.”
“Stop that.” St. Loup rolled his eyes. “I have listening devices. I heard every word you said. Psychopath, am I? We’ll see.” He gestured to his men. “Tie it up. Truss it.”
Arjun said, “St. Loup, did you hear what it said?”
“I just said so, didn’t I? Bloody hell, look at it. First time I saw it was a thousand years ago and it was the prettiest little snake in Shay’s pocket.
Come with me
, Shay said,
I’ve got something to show you. Something money can’t buy.
And this thing flickered its tongue, I remember distinctly. Ah, none of us have aged well.”
Ruth edged toward the motorcars. Three of them stood scattered odd-angled on the quarry’s ground. No one seemed to be looking at her.
“St. Loup, did you listen to what it said? We’re just pieces in a game Shay plays with himself. All of us, we’re just weapons. We’ve been lied to.”
“So? I’m not going to stop.
Are you
going to stop? I didn’t think so. Whatever made you think the game wasn’t fixed? Sometimes I forget you grew up in a monastery.”
How did you operate a motorcar? Ruth had no idea. How did you even open their doors? Ruth had never touched a motorcar before—they weren’t for her kind of people. It was open-roofed, and the interior was a forbidding underbelly of wheels and dials and pedals and levers sticking out like the legs of a beetle on its back.
St. Loup’s men shoved the Beast to its knees, tore away the silk sheet, tied its hands behind its back. St. Loup glanced at the wound beneath its legs and winced. “I liked you better before. Now you’re mine, can I change you back?”
The Beast growled. “I’m no one’s.”
“Of course you are. You’re a thing, a tool.”
Arjun stood next to St. Loup, as if they really were old friends. “We’re all tools,” he said.
“Yes, but some of us are more important than others. So was it this thing that bit your hand? You can tell me now. Would you like me to cut its fingers off?”
Arjun shrugged. “I’d rather you didn’t.”
Ruth leaned slowly against the shiny black door of the nearest motorcar. Was it locked? She fumbled blind, behind her back, trying to be unobtrusive, while her eyes watched St. Loup as he circled the Beast, grinning and running his hands through his hair in excitement.
“You’re mine,” St. Loup said. “The key. I don’t care if Shay wanted me to find you, I don’t care about his stupid plans and schemes. I’m past scheming now. I win. Tell me the way.”
Who
was
St. Loup? For that matter who was Arjun? He seemed to have forgotten about her. And who was
she?
Ruth’s head spun and her fingers, fiddling with the door, were numb. Was she one of these people? Was this her world? Ivy would have been at home here. Ivy would have been in charge of the situation. Ruth didn’t know what to do or say or even who she was or why she was there— she wanted to crawl away and hide. She wanted a cigarette.
The Beast said, “I won’t tell you.”
“It’s your function. It’s what you’re
for.”
“I’m free.”
“No you’re not, I’ve got you tied up on the floor.”
One of St. Loup’s men stepped round the back of the motorcar and grabbed Ruth’s arm. Stunned, she shuddered and went limp. The man shook his head without making eye contact with her. He
was twice her size, muscular, scarred along the line of his jaw so the beard grew patchy—there was no point in fighting him. She wouldn’t even know how to begin.
“Listen, you horrible animal. I pay these men by the hour and they charge extra for torture, so don’t waste my time.”
“You have no way of sending your men home,” Arjun pointed out. “Are you paying them enough to come with you to the Mountain?”
The man holding Ruth’s arm grunted in what seemed like surprise.
“Shut up,” St. Loup said. “Beast, tell me the way.”
“It’s mine. The Mountain is mine to inherit.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re an animal. Talk or I start cutting things off you.”
“May I?” Arjun put a hand on St. Loup’s shoulder. “It knows me. It started to tell me the way once before, but we got interrupted.”
“All right. All right. You’re a good sport, Arjun. When I run the world I’ll make you the best God you could want, you can piss off back to your temple and worship it and we’ll never have to get on each other’s nerves again. Make it talk.”
“Beast,” Arjun said. “It’s time. You owe me.” He knelt next to it. “How do we get to the Mountain?”
“I’m free.”
Arjun put his wounded hand on the Beast’s forehead. “No. You’re not.” He reached out with the other hand and the scalpel glinted as it fell from his sleeve. He drew it swiftly across the Beast’s throat, through its double chin and stubbly growth of beard. Blood gushed and the Beast sighed and slumped on the ground.
Arjun stood, letting the scalpel drop. St. Loup was transfixed in shock.
“Now neither of us can have it,” Arjun said.
“You
can’t have it, St. Loup.”
The sleek little gun trembled in St. Loup’s hand. He emitted a strangulated whine.
The Beast was still for a long moment, quite clearly dead. Then without warning it spasmed. It shook on the quarry floor. Its body twisted and jerked. Blood sprayed from its wound. The creature roared senselessly and thrashed with arms that bent backward as if broken. Arjun stepped nervously away from it. St. Loup stepped forward.
St. Loup’s man let go of Ruth’s arm to reach for his gun. Half-consciously she fell backward through the motorcar’s open roof and into its black leather innards.
She had a vague sense that one pressed the pedals—which she did, sprawled across the seat, with her left hand—and pulled levers—she kicked randomly at them. St. Loup’s man reached over and suddenly the car lurched—not forward but backward. St. Loup’s man shouted and fell. The car’s wheels threw up gravel and dust. The vehicle slammed against a rock and Ruth bit her lip. She kicked and yanked and operated whatever came to hand and the car lurched again, forward, skidding suddenly sideways. It crunched across the glass light-box and everything went dark again. She yanked at the wheel and the car spun and came to a halt.
There were screams in the night. The dull red glow of the bonfires lit motion and struggle. Men were running back and forth. Something swelled on the floor of the quarry, something unfolding itself in shadow where the Beast had lain.
Ruth pulled herself upright. The car had two kerosene lanterns squatting on its hood and something Ruth hit with her elbow caused them to spark into life. She shoved her foot down on the pedals and the car roared forward. It slammed into one of the Beast’s other cars, which in turn slammed into a third, which skidded and knocked over a burning oilcan and caught fire. Ruth reversed, moved forward again, gathering frightening speed.
Golden hair shone in her lamps. St. Loup stood suddenly in front of her. He raised his gun. The next moment the car bumped and leapt a little in the air as St. Loup fell beneath it.
Had she meant to do that? She wasn’t sure. She pulled something that caused the car to stop suddenly, its engine screaming, and she fell forward and hit her head.
The door opened. When she looked up again Arjun was climbing into the seat next to her. It crossed her mind briefly to kick him out.
“Go,” he said, “quickly! Please.”
Behind her two of the cars were burning and the tent seemed to have caught fire, too. Something thrashed in the flames—long, serpentine, many-legged, a body like a train, a mouth like an industrial excavator.
“Don’t look back, Ruth,
go faster.”
She pulled the wrong lever and the car’s gears ground and screamed and the vehicle halted. Behind them the two burning cars exploded, one then the other. In the mirror, something immense writhed in greasy names. Men fled in all directions. A little grey bird burst from the tent and took to the air, beating strong shadowy wings, hooting in triumph.