The Builders (8 page)

After he had finished betraying the Captain, and the skunk and his forces had dumped their numerous dead in an open trough and headed back to the Capital, Reconquista locked the door and hung a
closed
sign over it. The sign would never come down. Reconquista hadn’t liked operating a bar, had only done so after he’d blown through most of the coin he’d gotten from Mephetic the first time he’d betrayed the Captain. But he’d be more careful with this round. He would migrate to the Kingdom to the South, where his money would spend further. Get a hacienda and some broken-down peasants to work it, bring in a few fat-bottomed dams to while away his last days. He didn’t have so many left, he knew.

Click, click,
click
.

Reconquista had started drinking just after he’d put up the sign, drinking and drinking with a purpose. It was, to be very clear, not out of any sense of guilt. Reconquista had never felt anything toward the Captain, nor toward any of the gang, nor toward anyone else, truth be told. And after all, it was the Captain’s fault that he only had half a body, the Captain’s fault for shooting Alfalfa the hare while Alfalfa the hare had been holding a stick of dynamite and standing next to Reconquista. Of course it had been Reconquista who had convinced Alfalfa to light that stick and to try to kill the Captain with it, Alfalfa and the Quaker and some of the others, now all dead—but then Reconquista did not count any particular sense of fairness among his virtues.

Click, click,
click
.

He was surprised that Gertrude had turned traitor; he could admit that. He hadn’t known that was coming, hadn’t bothered to try to turn the mole five years back, hadn’t tried with the mole or any of the other inner circle. He’d figured them for saps, thick with those strange notions of loyalty that led animals into the grave at some earlier date than was strictly necessary. And also, being higher up in the Captain’s ranks they were in for a larger cut of the spoils, had less incentive for betrayal.

Click, click,
click
.

Reconquista, by contrast, had known he wouldn’t be getting a very significant slice—oh, the rest of the boys were friendly enough to him, in their backhanded way, but he wasn’t tough, not tough like Barley or the Dragon, and the fact that he’d been with the Captain since the beginning, or nearly since, wouldn’t have guaranteed him any more than crumbs. And what was the point of the whole thing, if it hadn’t been to make out like bandits in the end? Certainly he had no loyalty to the Elder, none of them did. It was pure self-interest for everyone; he’d just been sharp enough to make good.

Click, click,
click
.

No, it wasn’t guilt. If Reconquista had to take a guess why he was drinking himself into a coma, it would have been because he knew he was getting old. This was his last scrap—he would never again get to feel adrenaline pumping through his veins, never again stand above the corpse of an enemy, or an ally for that matter. He would while away his few remaining years a farting, toothless, one-armed geezer.

Click, click,
click
.

It was enough to make Reconquista want to take another drink of whiskey. And why not? Who was left to stop him, after all?

Click, click,
click
.

Reconquista got up from his seat, wooden leg struggling to find purchase. He made his way behind the bar, got the sawed-off shotgun he kept for protection. It had a hell of a kick, especially with Reconquista only having the one hand, but the spread made accuracy less than critical. All you needed to do was aim in the general direction of whatever you wanted dead, pull the trigger, and dig a hole. It was this last part that Reconquista cared for least.

Click, click,
click
.

With his one good hand he held the butt, sliding his hook beneath the barrel. Then he stumbled out to the back porch. He was too drunk to be fearful, and anyway there wasn’t any reason to be. The Captain was captured, soon to be dead, the companions scattered or turned traitor themselves.

Click, click,
click
.

He had been sure it was coming from the back, but standing on the porch now he couldn’t see anything beyond the outhouse and the scrub brush that led into the desert.

Click, click,
click
.

The shadows were getting long, and Reconquista was getting frightened, frightened through the bottle of whiskey in his stomach, frightened down into his bones and into the bones of his absent arm and his absent leg. “Who’s out here?” he asked stupidly, knowing it was stupid as he was asking it.

Click, click,
click
.

“I’m warning you!” he yelled, which was an even stupider thing to say, because whatever was waiting for him didn’t need to be fearful, and knew it.

The shadows descended, and though he had time to fire off two full barrels of double aught they didn’t do any good, flew harmlessly into the sky and then dropped harmlessly onto the ground. The shadow covered him and then the shadow was Elf, and then Elf’s beak and Elf’s claws began to do what beaks and claws do, and Reconquista screamed.

The rat’s death was quick, but terrible all the same.

There was only one creature in the dungeons when they brought the Captain in: a squirrel, though he was so thick with dirt and bent with age it took a moment to be sure. An empty prison is generally a sign of a well-run state, of a happy populace with no need to engage in crime. In this particular instance it was a sign of the opposite, of a nation that had declared anything worse than shoplifting a capital offense and was quick to execute that policy, and, for that matter, its citizens. Which is to say that a great many creatures went into Mephetic’s dungeons, but they didn’t stay long, a way station on the path to the dirt.

That the squirrel had remained alive so long was a clerical error, though whether of a benign or malignant sort, it was hard to say. He had gone mad quite quickly, the rambunctious energy of his species forced inward by the constraints of his cell. He could no longer remember what his crime had been, or what he had done before his time there, or what his name was, or what the sun looked like.

The guards dumped the Captain into his cell, made promises to see him again soon, and left. The Captain stood, brushed himself off, and scowled. He reached for his purse of tobacco, realized it had been taken, and scowled some more. It had been two days since his capture, the result of Gertrude’s treachery and Mephetic’s cleverness, and the forty-eight hours had been less than pleasant. If the situation were reversed, Mephetic wouldn’t have lasted that long. The Captain would have put him in the ground as soon as he had him; double-tap and then food for the ants. The Captain didn’t torture except when he had to, and he never, ever, left an enemy alive.

Mephetic, it seemed, was crueler. Or more foolish.

“Tell me a story,” the squirrel chittered all of a sudden, climbing up the bars of the cell, his tail flaring back and forth, caked with muck and grime and other, nastier things. “Tell me a story,” he repeated, louder this time. “Tell me a story or I’ll carve out your eyes, tell me a story or I’ll chew out your tongue, tell me a story or I’ll sneak into your cell and make your bones into jelly!”

He was screaming at this point, though the Captain seemed not to notice, staring hard at the concrete walls.

The squirrel dropped down to the floor. “Tell me a story,” he said, “or I’ll cry.”

Pity was generally no more a motivator of the Captain than fear—but for whatever reason he started to speak then. “Once there were two brothers.”

The squirrel crossed his legs and rested his head on his hand, eager as a prized student, his tail like a faded hairbrush held upright.

“The two brothers were the heirs to a great kingdom. A kingdom prosperous and happy, a kingdom that, split between them, was still more than any animal would ever need or want.”

From somewhere far off, there was a sound.

“But for the two brothers half of everything wasn’t nearly enough, and so they began to plot and to scheme against each other, and finally, in time, turned to open battle.”

The sound grew louder, though not yet distinct. It was an unfriendly sound, this much could be said with certainty.

“Since the brothers were as cowardly as they were rapacious, and no sort of soldiers, they hired animals who would fight for them—cruel, strong, dangerous—and they let them loose upon their kingdom. And war raged between the two brothers, across the length and breadth of their lands—until finally, the leader of the forces of the elder brother, being crueler, and stronger, and more dangerous, proved victorious.”

The sound was prolonged, vigorous. The squirrel didn’t seem to notice, however, so engrossed was he in the Captain’s story. The Captain probably noticed, but the Captain had heard enough screaming not to get excited about hearing more. He started to talk louder himself, louder and more rapidly, either to drown out the sound or simply from the furor of the narrative.

“But the elder brother and his forces had traitors in their midst, and they betrayed their comrades in their moment of triumph, breaking their power and bringing the younger brother to the throne. And the armies of the elder brother were scattered across the kingdom and beyond, and most thought them dead and buried, and forgot them.”

More screams, and gunfire, and something louder than gunfire—dynamite, maybe?

“But they weren’t dead, only battered, and they nourished hatred in their hearts, fed off of it, let it warm them in the cold, began to love their hatred as the only thing left to them. And as the kingdom’s fortunes faded, and as the land descended into tyranny and poverty, the armies of the elder brother saw their moment.”

The door to the jail flew open, burst right off its hinges, Barley coming in smooth behind it. His shoulder was bandaged but he carried his organ-gun without any trouble. Cinnabar slipped in an instant afterward, already reloading his pistols.

“What the hell took you so long?” the Captain asked.

Barley set his cannon on the ground for a moment. “Nice to see you too, Captain.” He put his hands around two of the bars, and tensed his shoulders, and then there was a gap wide enough for the Captain to walk through.

Which the Captain did.

“Wait!” the Squirrel screamed. “Wait!”

The Captain turned back to him.

“How does it end?”

The Captain widened his lips around his teeth. Some would call that a smile. They would be wrong. “In blood.”

A half-mile out from the inner keep, hanging by her tail in the branches of a tall elm tree, unnoticeable in the darkness, Boudica waited.

Mephetic had told the lieutenant not to lose sight of the mole, not for one second, not even after they’d dropped the mouse off at the dungeons.

The lieutenant hadn’t seen what the big deal was. The mole was a typical female of her species, dress strained by wallowing fat, all but blind in any sort of light, and those bifocals might be fetching but they weren’t helping her see any better. Even by the standards of a creature that lived underground and ate grubs, Gertrude didn’t seem like much to worry about. She had such a friendly smile, after all.

Still, it wasn’t the lieutenant’s job to second-guess Mephetic. Gertrude was searched very thoroughly at the gatehouse, two rats relieving her of the pistol in her sleeve and the small knife that was nearly unnoticeable at the top of her boot, and even of a pen case they thought might be used as club. Gertrude suffered the indignity without breaking her smile, the absurdity of their caution obvious to all involved. Afterward they laughed and shook hands, except the lieutenant, who kept a firm eye on Gertrude, and a firm scowl on her as well. Before entering the main building the lieutenant turned back to wave to the guards, but they didn’t see him or were too lazy to answer, and remained on their stools. Faintly annoyed, he continued in behind Gertrude.

The keep was the biggest and largest and most solid structure in the Capital, in the Gardens, and in any of the neighboring kingdoms. The first walls were massive and imposing, huge slabs of stone that could withstand an artillery shell from close range and not quiver. Inside was a second citadel, the inner keep, small only by the standards of the structure that surrounded it. You’d need an army ten times the size of what Mephetic possessed to besiege it successfully, and even then you’d still need to starve out the garrison. The lieutenant led Gertrude deeper into the castle, past checkpoint after checkpoint of fierce rat guards. At every interval they were stopped to make sure the lieutenant was who he said he was, that the prisoner hadn’t pulled a fast one or somehow subverted her captor. At every interval the mole was respectful, amiable even, laughing and glad-handing with the rat guards. Still, the lieutenant didn’t let his guard down. There must be something about this mole, if Mephetic had been so worried about her.

They came finally to the boss’s office, the nerve center for the whole kingdom. In four years, the lieutenant had never seen the Toad himself—the Lord, he meant, the Lord, you’d catch hell if you forgot that one. Mephetic liked to keep up the pretense, though even the blind beggars in the slums knew the Younger wasn’t running anything.

“You’ve done a fine job, Lieutenant,” Gertrude said, as they waited for the door to open. “Mephetic will surely look kindly on you for overseeing something of this importance.” The mole leaned in and settled one hand on his wrist, as if to assure him. “You’ll make captain by next year—and think how proud your litter will be!”

The lieutenant thanked Gertrude and did indeed think about how happy his pups would be to hear of his promotion, and how he might spend the raise on a toy boat for Alus and a new dress for Serah’s doll and a spinning top for Tomas Jr. and . . .

Two scowling rats opened the door, nodded at the lieutenant, and gestured warily for the mole to come in. Well, they could hardly be blamed, though if the lieutenant knew Gertrude, and he felt he did, even after just these few moments, it wouldn’t be long before she melted their icy demeanor.

The boss’s office was the size of a large dining room, heavy oak shelves full of books that the lieutenant had never seen the boss read, not that there was any reason the boss would feel that this was an activity aided by the lieutenant’s presence. There was a desk as heavy as a boulder in the center of the room, and after a bit of time—enough to reinforce that the boss was the boss and you were not—Mephetic came in through a back door and stood in front of it. The lieutenant could tell how happy he was by his smile, which was wide and open, and his tail, which was flaring up and down ever so slightly.

“Why the Underground Man?” he asked Gertrude.

“Instead of Underground Woman?”

“Yes.”

“Underground Man sounds scarier.”

“That’s true,” Mephetic agreed. “If I’d had any idea that you were the creature behind organized crime in the city, I’d have . . .”

“Killed me?” Gertrude asked, as if she found nothing particularly objectionable about the notion. “I thought you might feel something like that, which is why I made sure you never learned.”

The lieutenant waited until he thought no one was looking, then loosened his collar.

“I’m glad, at least, that you had the good sense to contact me early on in this escapade,” Mephetic said. “That mouse needs to learn when he’s beaten.”

“It won’t take. You’ll have to kill him.”

“I think that’s something we can arrange.”

Was it hot in here? the lieutenant wondered. The day had been blazing, but the evening had cooled down somewhat—or at least that was what he had been thinking on his way in. But now he was sweating buckshot, could feel it mat down his fur.

“Imagine spending all this time obsessed with something as pointless as revenge,” Mephetic said. “That was always the problem with the Captain, if you don’t mind me saying so. He was too strong a hater.”

“I think perhaps there is no creature in the Gardens with such a talent for it,” Gertrude answered, “and so you can hardly be surprised that he chooses to exercise his ability. Fish swim, birds fly, the Captain hates.”

“Though not for very much longer.”

“It would have been easier if you’d let me know you had another creature on the inside.”

“I figured for someone of your abilities, it didn’t need to be easy.”

“No, indeed,” the mole said, smiling her fool-false smile. “I quite enjoy the challenge.”

The boss said something, but the lieutenant couldn’t quite make it out. If he was being honest, the lieutenant would have had to say that, what with how hot it had gotten, he was no longer as interested in the conversation as he had been. The boss repeated whatever he said, though it took a repetition of that repetition before the lieutenant could finally understand it.

“Lieutenant,” Mephetic asked, “what the hell is wrong with you?”

“I assume it’s the poison I gave him,” Gertrude said. “A concoction of my own making—largely painless, though quite fast-acting.”

The lieutenant realized he was on the ground and wondered for a moment how he had gotten there. But it was growing dark, and he turned his mind back to his dam, and his pups, and he hoped they wouldn’t miss him too terribly.

Mephetic went for the pistol in his belt, but Gertrude moved with a speed that would have been astonishing in any animal, let alone one who had never before shown any more dexterity than what was required to tie her shoes. A long, heavy needle, the same one that had poisoned half the guards Gertrude had come in contact with since being brought into the citadel, sailed through the air and slammed against Mephetic’s drawn revolver, sending the weapon spinning off onto the floor.

The two rats still living, a notch slower than Mephetic and any number of notches slower than Gertrude (a notch not being a literal measurement of speed) went for their own weapons then, though of course it was far too late. Gertrude spread her arms wide, as if in supplication or to offer an embrace, and one thin bit of metal flew into one of the rats, and another thin bit of metal flew into the other, and then it was just Mephetic and the Underground Man alive in the room. And probably not both of them for very much longer.

“A double-cross,” Mephetic said. It had been a long time since he’d done his own killing, and apart from his lost gun, he had nothing but a wavy-bladed knife, which he drew swiftly.

“I think this would be a triple-cross, actually, though at some point the sums get hard to do without pen and paper.” If Gertrude had any other weapons on her person, she made no move for them, her hands clasped together as if in prayer.

Mephetic feinted left and took a swipe at her, but Gertrude didn’t so much as quiver at the ruse, and so neatly dodged the attack itself that for a moment Mephetic got the impression he was fighting not a plump, hairy mole, but some creature composed of the very ether itself.

“I’ve still got the Captain,” Mephetic said, trying to land a verbal blow if he couldn’t manage a physical one.

“Not for much longer, I should think. On behalf of the Captain, I’d very much like to thank you for offering us ingress into your impregnable abode.
Our
impregnable abode, I should very soon say.”

Mephetic roared and tossed his blade at Gertrude, turning end over end, though by the time it reached the space Gertrude had occupied a scant second earlier Gertrude was no longer occupying it.

Which in fact Mephetic had predicted, having belatedly come to recognize the mole’s unnatural speed, a speed that was contrary to her species and indeed to her physical makeup. In fact the skunk, though he had misplayed this particular game, misplayed it quite thoroughly indeed, was no dullard. You will find that skunks as a species are quite clever, as well as being relatively fast and hard to kill.

Though of course, this is not what skunks are famous for. Skunks are famous for one thing and one thing only, and this was the emission that, dropping swiftly and swinging his bushy tail around, Mephetic released from his anal glands, a pulse of foulness that crowded thick through the close air.