Devon Monk - Tin Swift

The men lowered their weapons.

“You want to play?” Shunt cooed. “My game. My rules: kill the hunter, kill the wolf. Bring me the deviser, and bring the witch. Both alive. If you wish to see the next season turn.”

“I agreed to kill the hunter and wolf. That was all,” Alabaster said.

“Then leave the witch behind. It is your suffering, not mine,” Mr. Shunt said. “And a short suffering it will be. You didn’t think my gift would last, did you, Alabaster Saint?”

He squeezed Alabaster’s throat, then let go, the razor tips of his fingers scratching delicately across his cheek.

“What do you mean?” the general asked.

“My gifts will not last. Without the witch’s spells, her binding of life to living, you will die. Soon, soon. Days, weeks. All of you dead.”

He clucked his tongue. “Poor men of dirt, bones of ash. So weak and frightened.”

He strolled out from behind Alabaster and offered him a wide, jagged smile. “Your grave hungers for the taste of you. If you do not kill my enemies, if you flee…I will pull the knots on your strings. Piece by piece, you will all fall down.”

The general pushed up onto his feet, holding the edge of the table and locking his knees. “I will not be threatened, Mr. Shunt,” he said. “And I will not bow to blackmail.”

“I do not threaten, Alabaster Saint. I make dreams come true. You took yours willingly. I gave you everything you desired. Dark wishes.”

“The witch for your bones, the deviser for mine.” He opened his coat and revealed the hole where his chest should be. In that ragged space was a terrible work of blood and bone and eyes and hands and mouths and things that should never be strung together. All of it moving, grinding, pumping.

In that strange work, dead center, was a gold and crystal clockwork dragonfly. So beautifully fashioned, Alabaster couldn’t help but be caught by the glory of it.

“This vessel,” Shunt said, “will fail me without the witch’s blood, without her magic, without her binding. But it will last many years beyond you and your men. Decades. The deviser can make me new again. I want her. I want them both. Now. And you want them now too.”

He bared his teeth and spat. His spittle landed on the table in front of the general’s hand and burned into the wood.

“Now.”

Mr. Shunt walked around the table and lifted the beautiful tin cup. He took a sip, his eyes fluttering closed for a moment before he began picking up the instruments of his torture, the instruments of his craft, one by one, as if no one else were in the tent with him.

He drew a cloth over each bloody blade, rubbing it clean and humming like a child with his favorite toys.

“General?” Lieutenant Foster said quietly.

“Out,” Alabaster barked. “All of you.”

Everyone left the room except for Foster, who lingered near the door.

Alabaster straightened and took a moment to don his shirt and coat, thinking through his actions. If what Mr. Shunt had said was true, he and a third of his men were at death’s door.

He refused to give in to the reaper so easily.

“We don’t know where the hunter and wolf are, Mr. Shunt,” Alabaster said. “It could take us a lifetime and more tracking these wilds for a man, and still leave him unfound. If you want him killed, you had best tell me where he is. You know. Don’t you?”

Mr. Shunt said nothing for a long stretch of silence. Alabaster buttoned his coat and waited. For all that Mr. Shunt had proven to be an unholy monster, in doing so, he had given a shred of advantage to Alabaster.

Shunt was failing. Dying. Perhaps the strange man was failing faster than he admitted.

Finally, Shunt inhaled a breath that sounded like leather bellows pulling full.

“In the air. In the sky,” Mr. Shunt whispered. “This—” He reached into his pocket and Alabaster readied himself for a gun.

But all that balanced in Shunt’s palm was a small wooden coin with a tiny tin hole in the center of it.

“Money?”

“A compass,” Shunt said. “A beacon. To the hunter, the wolf, the deviser, and the witch.”

He stretched out his overly long arm. The same arm that had just crawled about on the floor under its own power. Shunt waited for Alabaster to take the coin from his palm.

The general set his jaw. “And what will I owe you for that coin?”

“The coin is my promise,” Shunt said. “It will show you the way to the deviser. Like a tin lock to a tin key.” He gave a dry chuckle, as if that statement were a great amusement to him.

His hand remained steady, palm flat, as if offering a treat to an animal.

Alabaster Saint took the coin. It was cool, light wood with a tin plug in the center. In the middle of that was a ragged little hole. Just like a key would fit.

“This is what will happen, Mr. Shunt,” the general said. “I will kill the hunter, kill the wolf. The witch and deviser will be under my hold. When you have reversed this evil you have brought upon us, then I will give you the witch and deviser to do with as you please. Do you understand the order of things here on my mountain, Mr. Shunt?”

Shunt had gone back to polishing his instruments. He paused, a corner of bloody cloth pushed between the teeth of a saw.

“Of course, General,” he murmured. “I am but a servant to your every wish.”

“See that it remains so, Mr. Shunt.”

He walked out of the tent, resisting the urge to pull his sword to see if Mr. Shunt would remain ticking without his head attached. Watching him die would almost be worth the gamble on whether or not his life really balanced on finding the witch and the deviser.

Almost.

“With me, Lieutenant,” he said.

Foster strode up behind him. It was an odd thing to hear the even rhythm of his pace, the slight drag of his prosthetic gone.

Just as strange as to be seeing the world again clear and sharp from two strong eyes.

General Saint had no intention of giving up these gifts Mr. Shunt had given them. But he’d be boiling in hell before he let another man rule over him.

“Have Les Mullins and Captain Dirkson left to find Marshal Cage?”

“Yes, sir. Several hours ago.”

“Good. Take this coin, and man the Devil’s Nine . Find the witch and deviser and bring them to me.”

“What about the hunter and wolf, sir?”

“If you find them, leave them behind. Alive. If Shunt wants them dead, he’ll have to do it himself.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lieutenant Foster turned toward the shed to ready the scout ship, leaving the heavier armed ships behind for General Alabaster Saint and the troops if they needed them.

“Sir?” Foster asked before he’d gone more than a step or two.

“Yes?”

“What about Mr. Shunt? What will you do with him?”

“I will break him to my will, Mr. Foster. Follow the compass, and set a flare when you’ve found the witch and deviser. Then we will discuss Mr. Shunt’s fate when we have what he most wants in our hands.”

Rose Small dreamed she was swimming in tea and honey. It was a lovely dream, warm and comforting.

“Rose,” Mae’s voice said as she drifted. “Wake up. You need to drink this.”

She wanted to tell Mae she didn’t need anything to drink. She was surrounded by tea. Then something cold and wet pressed against her forehead, and her lips, making her very thirsty.

All the tea around her tasted like dust.

“Wake up, Rose,” Mae said again. “Time to wake up.”

It took Rose several tries, but she finally lifted her eyelids.

Pain rolled through her back and chest, and made her stomach sour. She was cold, hot, and raw from the top of her head, hurting the most down the left side of her face, shoulder, and arm. She bit her lip but could not stifle a moan.