by Carmel Rechnitzer
“I didn’t take myself for a bitter man,” Henri Michelet admitted to no one in particular. To the wind herself, maybe. “But I find myself as sour as the horse-piss vinegar this City calls wine.”
He stood apart from his squad of Musketeers – except, it wasn’t even a squad, what with Dufort murdered and Leontine demoted – and found his reserves of joy and panache completely spent. What little calmness the evening breeze could have granted him was strangled by the sheer oppressive noise of celebration. The City of Five Sails, stretching out across the horizon, writhed and rioted with joy.
Montaigne’s parties rarely passed without a sprinkling of grand conspiracy, a little bit of attempted murder, some good wine, a lot of flirting. The parties of his youth seemed tame – no! Outright chaste! In comparison to the last two days. Every man was out in the streets, piss drunk and amorous. Every woman was out in the streets, piss drunk and murderous. Every child was out in the streets, pissing everywhere, stealing everything, insulting anyone, imbibing anything. Everything was color and chaos and unbridled joy. Henri presumed that only direct intervention from the angels themselves kept the locals from cannibalism. Everything else laid out on the proverbial or literal tables.
“Theus,” he called out, finding a target for his ire, “I’d send your enemies to your gate, if you would only point them out to me from this crowd of heathens. I’ll pay attention at church, most Holy of Holies, if you give me just a glimpse of that wretched El Gato.”
His brothers-in-arms were similarly cheerless. They sat on the balcony below him, sore legs splayed after hours of fruitless marching. Their backs slumped in defeat. Their hair, their hats, their shirts all drooping from the sweat of a long day under a cruel sun. They’d prowled every street in this forsaken City chasing rumors of mischief. Found more than their fair share. Intervened, as their code of honor demanded. But they hadn’t caught a single member of the Cat’s Paw Gang.
The others passed a skin of wine around, forgetting about him. He couldn’t blame them. He was lying with his back flat on the roof, heels anchored in the gutter to keep from tumbling down. At best, they could squint and spot the tips of hit boots blocking the star light. He stayed still, cradling his rifle, ostensibly on the look-out for danger. After a day full of chasing every miscreant through the festival throngs, he was certain danger had its fill of the Musketeers and would stay away.
Still, he did his duty, kept the watch… that was his role and his oath and his self-imposed punishment for letting Dufort die. He wouldn’t forgive himself… not even if Theus came to visit and demanded it… not until the day he died. Henri probably wouldn’t forgive himself past his inevitable death either, to be honest. But he deserved some wine, to go with his whining.
“Pass the drink,” he bellowed, too morose to find a colorful insult to jibe his comrades with.
“Oh, merde!” sputtered Jean Urbain. “Paint me with spots and call me a cow, I’ve forgotten you’re up there.”
“I’m always up here,” Henri replied. The wineskin sailed up in a lazy arc, far over to his left, smacked into the roof with a deep, echoey thwack. He gave one-third of an effort to pin the wineskin in place with his outstretched rifle, but couldn’t make it in time. The sack rolled and swup-wup-wupped its way down the roof tiles before landing on a disgruntled Bastien. Henri did manage to giggle at that.
Before they could try to pass him the wine again, fireworks flowered in the far distance. The lights twinkled beautifully, and Henri found himself cursing the damned display. Those things were monstrously expensive, imported all the way from the courts of Shenzhou. No man who could afford them deserved them, surely.
Like a chorus of fools, his friends ooh’d and aah’d at the miraculous lightshow. Red, yello, orange, blue, one by one, the whistling missiles reach their apex and burst into view. The largest of them, green as grass, shook the firmament and spread across the entirety of the sky. The little fizzles dropped, twinkled, extinguished, disappeared. Except for one. One of them stayed glowing. One of them started moving left, instead of down.
“Forget the wine, frères, does one of you have a spyglass?” He asked. He heard them scramble below, each of them scrambling through their discarded gear.
Jean Urbain’s spyglass sailed over the gutter, two feet too far to the right, and tklanchked against the tile. There went twenty-five guilders in specialty glass, now cracked.
“The next imbécile who tosses anything up here without looking first is getting shot,” Henri barked.
“Aye, aye, Captien,” they snarked in unison.
The little green light blinked, and he breathed a sigh of disbelief. Was he losing his mind? No, no. There it was, again. It winked, twinkled, kept crossing the skyline of the City. He traced it for a moment. Theus help him, the little green light was leaping from roof-to-far-away-roof.
“Spyglass, now!” Instead of adding insulting saltiness to his voice, he gave the order with militant calmness. He could hear each of his comrades snap into sober action. They knew that tone. Knew what it meant.
While they might understand the severity of the situation, he didn’t want to trust a third unfortunate toss onto the roof. He slid down from the gutter, landed heavily on the balcony. The moment his feet touched the ground, Bastien threw a second spyglass up and over. Tklanchk.
“I am going to shoot you,” Henri said.
“Report, mon ami,” Jean Urbain ordered.
“Search the roof line. Little green light. Estimating eight hundred meters, moving lateral, not further away. Maybe nine hundred meters, actually.”
The team pushed aside the deckchair and table to clear their ad-hoc platform. The balcony table tipped over. Summer fruit rolled through the gaps in the railing, tumpting and thwapting onto the ground below.
“Leontine, do you see it?” Henri asked. She had the remaining spyglass, sweeping it side to side across the left-hand portion of the sky. Bastien was loading another rifle, expert hands pouring powder despite their tipsy wobble. Jean snuck his kerchief between the metal railing and the barrel of Henri’s rifle, pinched the silk into a bunch, so it kept the barrels from skittering side to side.
“Leontine?”
“Yes, yes!” She promised. The once confident woman looked… Nervous. Terrified. He didn’t blame her. The last time she’d seen action, she’d lost herself and crossed their sacred boundary. She’d killed a man without orders, refused to retreat and regroup before resorting to lethal force. To the horror of everyone present, lethal force hadn’t exactly done much to stop Lucasz Martinez. She’d lost her position for nothing. Spent her future on one of the City’s many expensive, arcane lessons.
“What in Theus’ name is it,” asked Bastien, curiosity overcoming his patience.
“Climbing roof to roof,” Leontine explained. “A cat burglar, must be. The biggest bloody burglar I’ve ever seen. Theus help me, it’s a… a… an elephant burglar.”
The balcony froze for a moment, utterly bewildered.
“They are carrying an elephant?” asked Bastien.
“No, the burglar is the size of one,” said Leontine.
“Easy to hit, eh?” Goaded Jean.
“Not at this distance, no,” Henri cursed.
Henri took account of the whole scene, trying to ground himself. They were all in a huff, assuming this rooftop runner must be a criminal – the criminal – their ultimate target. And that wasn’t a safe assumption.
What could he see? The streets below glowed with candle and torchlight, with ten thousand celebratory citizens dancing in the streets. Each window was thrown open, each balcony loaded with families, with lovers, with howling cats and dogs. It was the perfect night for thieving – the whole world was looking out instead of in.
But that didn’t mean their burglar. It didn’t mean El Gato, unless Theus had very suddenly changed his policy about answering Henri’s prayers. He needed more clues. Which way was the green light heading?
East, towards the Castille district. East, and only east, seemingly bouncing across the tight-packed roofs of City Center. The silhouettes, the brief flashes of spires and shingles in moonlight and fireworks, spoke of Calle de Barbero. The wealthy, merchant-ier part of town. Good clues, but not enough. Any thief would love such a target. Was this El Gato?
“Leontine!” Jean Urbain hissed, impatient for answers.
“I can’t tell!” She said. “The creature is massive. Bounding across gaps I’d struggle to clear. Loping. Almost running on all fours, like an animal.”
“Like a cat?” asked Bastien.
“Gracelessly, so no,” she said.
“The light. What in Theus’ name is that bright, green light?” asked Henri.
“That’s the damndest thing!” Leontine said, adjusting the focus of her spyglass over and over. “I can’t see the face. The head. The bright green light is coming right out the front of the head. Like this… person? Has a lantern for a skull.”
The Musketeers all turned to each other, risked losing their bead on their target, each of their left eyebrows cocked in collective confusion.
“I’ve travelled the full circle of this world,” Bastien muttered, “and I have not heard of such a thing.” Their hope was depleting. This was something awful, but it did not sound like an El Gato.
They all turned back towards the skyline, heads tilted further left, expecting the green light to have continued. It hadn’t. A moment of mad searching later, and they clocked where it had stopped.
“That… thing is standing on the roof of the Catedral de las Gaviotas,” Henri said. He wasn’t much of a religious man, certainly not enough to have attended a service since coming to town. Still, he recognized the distinct, winged outline of the belltower immediately. He’d never been inside, but the Cathedral of Gulls was rumored to be more of an Inquisition armory than a house of worship. It sat nestled between the Mercer’s Guildhall and the City Mint. It was a place of power for the Church. A place few could sneak into – and most who could were likely too smart and experienced to try.
The light winked out.
“What happened?” asked Jean.
“That thing dove down the belltower,” Leontine explained.
“Bastien, we go!” Jean commanded. All drunkenness and tiredness disappeared from the man. Instantly, he was their hero again, eyes as sharp as the points of his mustache. “Henri, Leontine, manœuvre de fenêtre!”
Bastien, bald head gleaming under the moonlight, couldn’t pull himself together quite as fast. He leapt after their commander, eager for adventure, forgetting his sword. Leontine reached out for the fine basket rapier, but flinched rather than grab it. She was no longer Bastien’s sibling, it wasn’t her sword to touch.
Henri looked at her impatiently, and refused to let go of his beloved, three-barreled-rifle. He motioned to her.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
“I won’t,” Henri said. He agreed with Jean about a lot of things, but Leontine’s punishment was not one of them. Leontine had been outnumbered by a mad viking and a seasoned pirate! If there was ever a time to fight to death, that had been it! And besides – and he still couldn’t believe it – Lucas Martinez had walked off the point of her sword, dead, laughing, and very much unbothered.
“S’il te plaît?” called Bastien, bounding down the packed street, one arm stretched overhead to catch his weapon. Leontine swore, grabbed it, tossed it beautifully, watched it land right in his palm.
“We’ll remake a Musketeer of you yet, mon enfant,” teased Henri. The two of them raced through their spartan lodging, down the stairs into Horatio’s ruined shop, back into the yard. The Musketeers had commandeered this place for practice. Targets, pommel-horse, wooden swords, anything and everything they’d need, littered the tight-packed space.
Henri readied rifle after rifle. Certainly overkill for one target, but Theus help him if he knew what kind of burglar glowed green as they burgled. Why rely on three shots when he could have six? He leaned each rifle, loaded but not cocked, against a nearby rail. Planted his feet. Stilled his beating heart and slowed his breath. Focused. Meditated.
Leontine stood parallel to him, teeth gritted, palm outstretched, eyes closed. She held the spyglass in her other hand, as a point of focus. He could see the tell-tale red of flowing blood welling between her knuckles.
She tore open a hole in reality. Channeled her lifeblood into a circling tear – an occult bore drilled through the very air in front of him. The misty red tunnel grew, stretched, pulled, ungulated. He stood in Horatio’s yard, facing west, gun pointed in the wholly wrong direction. The portal in front of him didn’t care for the laws of nature or the orientation of heaven or earth. The festering wound showed him the east, showed him the rooftops, showed him the tower of the Cathedral of Gulls. If he spat forward with enough force, he would hit the bell.
Henri and Leontine had raced down here to set their trap, which had been a gamble. Maybe a mistake. There was no guarantee that the glowing burglar hadn’t fled in the passing minute since they last saw him through the spyglass. There was no guarantee they would climb back out the tower, glowing face peaking past the bottom lip of the belfry, for Henri to take his shot. The two of them would have to hold position for as long as they could and pray.
Henri’s breathing slowed to a crawl. His lungs burned, his eyes grew dry and his heart began to hurt as he stood as still as stone. The seconds crawled by. The sounds of the festival refused to fade. The world danced with joy and he was frozen with fury. He didn’t budge, even as the muscles of his shoulders and arms began to cramp from the stillness.
Whatever discomfort he felt was nothing compared to Leontine. He thought she looked sweaty and tired before, but now she was drenched with exertion, as wet as if she’d leapt into the sea. Her face was pale, far too pale for the meager moonlight. Her eyes were screwed shut and her mouth moved in repeated prayer. Minute by minute, she sank. First to one knee, then to both, then back onto her heels.
Through the porte, he spotted a tell-tale green glow bubble up from the body of the tower, spill over the lip of the belfry. Whomever it was, whatever it was, the glowing burglar planned on exiting the way it came. Henri’s finger curled ever-so-slightly tighter around the trigger, a mere hair’s breadth away from firing.
KLONG!
It was nowhere near the turning of the hour, but the bell rung. Clanged with the force of a vicious blow, as if someone had crashed an anvil into it. The sheer shock of it shattered both Henri and Leontine’s concentration.
Henri fired, heard his bullet puncture through the side of the bronze bell and bounce inside it. The sharp cacophony mixed with rumbling, insincere laughter. The burglar’s voice was bone-rattling deep. Joyless. Cold as ice. Henri cursed himself. It was the first time he’d misfired since he’d joined the Musketeers.
Leontine’s back arched taut effort. She dropped her spyglass, pressed her bloody hands against her ears to reinforce her waning willpower.The porte stretched, writhed, chewed open and shut as she tried to maintain it. Through the blinks of red abyss, Henri caught a vision of the largest man he’d ever seen hoisting himself out of the belfry, beginning bounding across the roof.
“Follow him!” Henri shouted, cranked the mechanism of his rifle, and prepared a second shot.
Leontine collapsed backwards from the efforts of her sorcerie, arms flung to the sky, eyes rolled back in her skull, blood bubbling over her lips. The porte burbled, sputtered and squelched in the air above her. Despite the wracking pain, she triumphed. The rotting hole in Theus’ world connected him to his target, gave him a clear line of sight.
Gave him a clear line of sight to a better prepared foe, so it turned out. The burglar, as if he could see the future and read the workings of Leontine’s spell,flung a pre-emptive projectile through the air. The missile whistled through the portal the moment it opened and caught Henri across the bridge of his nose. A loose roof tile, Henri realized, once baked clay met his flesh and bone. Dust and splintered bloomed across his vision like a firework. Pain bloomed across his face like a firework.
Henri spilled backwards, stunned, head roaring with pain. By equal parts instinct and training, he kept grip of his gun, managed to roll into the force of the blow. That giant had tossed a loose rooftile with the force of a cannonball. Theus, help us! Henri prayed as he came up, vision swimming, seeing double. The giant leaned through the portal. Gripped the edges of the wild spell, flexing, forcing it open. Keeping the hellish wound from closing, the very air from healing. His palms glowed sickly green. His face was ablaze with sickly green. Verdant light poured from one eye socket, as bright and fearsome as the wrath of Theus.
Leontine’s body was twisted tight into angles it certainly should not have scrunched itself into. The air abandoned her lungs. A pitiable, necrotic wheeze whistled past her lips. Henri had to shoot this monster before the cost of maintaining the portal killed her.
He fired a second shot, at a five meter distance, and the man dodged. Henri cranked the mechanism and bit his own tongue hard enough for the pain to force his eyes to focus. He fired a third and final shot, and the man dodged. Between the writhing confines of the portal and the massive shoulders of his target, there were maybe three inches of empty air. How in the Devil’s unholy name-
“I can see your bullets, little mouse,” explained the man. There was a frigid, playful joy in his voice again. Not a single hint of fear, as if death hadn’t whistled past his skull three times in the last minute alone. Henri dove for another rifle, intent to put the fear of Hell back into this prideful son of a-
“Save your efforts, and listen,” grumbled the man. “I swear to all gods, old and new, that I am not your enemy.”
“You are killing her!” Henri shouted, pointing to Leontine. Her muscles spasmed and coiled. Her whole body creased, crinkled, crumpled.
“Listen!” said the man. “Ussura is not your enemy.”
“Then who is?” Henri asked, desperate.
“I see your future, little mice,” promised the man, green light shining so brightly through the boundaries of his skin and skull that it danced on his tongue. “There is a path for all of you to leave this town alive. Well… those who remain.”
“How!?”
“Odette holds the Syrneth Compass. Bring it to me. Bring it to Yevgeni the Boar, and I will teach you the only future you can afford.”
The man – the monster – leaned away. The portal blinked shut.
Henri rushed to Leontine, watched her body unwind, her eyes roll forward, her chest spring up with agonized breath. He rushed to cradle her. She spat blood all over his chest.
“What in Theus’ name is happening in this pit of sorcery and sin?” she asked, once her breath returned. She sounded worse than she looked, somehow.
“You know what? I’d rather not know,” admitted Henri. His head hurt. His head hurt so bad. He prayed for healing. He prayed for peace. He prayed for a single moment of quiet. He prayed Theus would bombard this City and reduce it to a quiet, peaceful pile of ash.
The City of Five Sails did not relent. Despite how Henri felt, the sound of revelry still hung in the air, as heavy as the humidity. The air was wet and thick with noise. The freaks, demons and devils that plagued the nearby streets sang, laughed, stomped their feet to the music. Even simply joy, Henri learned, could be wielded like a cudgel here.
He squeezed Leontine’s clammy hand, saw how near death she’d come yet again. He found his resolve. The wonderful thing about a cudgel fight, Henri knew, was that he could always bring along his gun.