For the first time in two days, she ate, raiding my pantry for dried herring wrapped in seaweed and a jar of pickled peppers. She washed it all down with the ceramic jug of rotgut I kept by the bed. Infidel rarely drank anything stronger than cider, but she chugged down the hard liquor like it was cool water. Afterward, she wiped her mouth on her sleeve and belched.
Usually, my shack felt cramped with the two of us. Now that it was just her, the place looked larger than it used to. Infidel scanned the room, her eyes surveying the clutter. There were books everywhere. Like my father, I’m an avid reader. A muddied pair of my boots sat next to the door. The oil-cloth coat I wore during the rainy season was still slumped on the floor next to them.
But the dominant feature of the room were all the empty bottles — wine, cider, ale, whiskey. Somewhere in the world was a glassblower who earned a living due to my habits, though the bastard had never bothered to write me a thank-you note.
This mound of mildewed books and dirty bottles was all the evidence left that I’d once been alive. Whatever the quirks of my sundry ancestors, at least they’d all successfully reproduced. I’d died childless. The only legacy I left the world amounted to little more than litter.
T
HE SUN HAD
set by the time Infidel departed my shack. The tide was flowing back out to sea. She wrinkled her nose as the stench of the muck wafted around her. She wound her way through the maze of gangplanks and piers, heading west. I knew where she was going. I had, after all, managed to choke out most of the word ‘fishmonger’ in my feeble dying effort to shed my guilt.
Bigsby was a rarity in Commonground, a man who made his living in an honest profession. Bigsby did brisk business selling barrels of dried and pickled fish to Wanderer ships, and supplying the more upscale establishments, like the
Black Swan
, with fresh oysters and rock lobsters to serve their clientele. Of course, Bigsby wouldn’t live in Commonground if there wasn’t something wrong with him. In his case, it’s physical. Bigsby is a dwarf, barely four feet tall, with the torso of a normal man but stubby legs and arms. He spends much of his time haggling with river-pygmies, buying their daily catch. Perhaps he came to Commonground to feel tall.
I’d sold Bigsby the Greatshadow map for a handful of coins. I’d been quite casual about it. I told him the map had belonged to my grandfather, but was a fraud that he could probably sell as a historical curiosity. My conscience had been assuaged because I knew that Bigsby wasn’t likely to raise a band of adventurers to go after the fortune. Nor would he drunkenly boast in one of the local bars about his treasure map. He was a quiet, timid man, who survived in this rough city by keeping — please pardon the expression — a low profile. If Bigsby did sell the map, he’d do it discreetly.
The fishmonger rarely went out at night. He was up at dawn every day to buy the night’s catch. As Infidel came within sight of his warehouse on the western edge of the bay, all the windows were dark. I guessed he’d gone to bed. Then I noticed a single dim light in one window, no brighter than a candle. As I focused on the window, I thought I could hear muffled voices. But the voices fell silent as Infidel stepped onto the gangplank leading to Bigsby’s door. The plank squeaked; the candlelight went dark.
As Infidel neared the door, I noticed that something was off. Specifically, the door was off its hinges. It was merely leaning in the frame, the wood around the lock and hinges freshly splintered. Infidel didn’t notice this detail. Instead, she paused a few feet away and kicked, cracking the door in twain. The halves fell into the room, clattering loudly as Infidel stomped inside.
The door that Infidel had entered led to the room that served as Bigsby’s office. Bigsby sat on short stool next to an empty pickle barrel he used as a desk. He was scribbling in the ledger he used to record the day’s trades. An extinguished candle sat beside the ledger, a plume of pale smoke rising from it.
He stared at Infidel, slack-jawed. His face was covered with sweat; dark stains seeped from beneath his armpits. He looked terrified, but this wasn’t fresh terror. His clothes had been soaked before Infidel had kicked in the door.
“C-can I-I-I... can I help you?”
“I’m here for my map,” said Infidel.
“Y-y-yuh-yuh... uh... huh?” All the blood was gone from Bigsby’s face, apparently taking with it the capacity for coherent speech.
Infidel stalked forward. She slammed her fist on the barrel, which all but vaporized in a spray of splinters. She reached for Bigsby.
“I don’t... I don’t... I don’t...” Bigsby’s voice fluttered as her hands slowly neared. I thought he was about to faint.
As her hands reached his throat, Infidel sighed. Her mouth relaxed from its menacing snarl as she stared down at Bigsby’s frightened face.
She stepped back and crossed her arms.
“Look,” she said. “I’m having a bad day. Let’s pretend I didn’t just kick in your door and start over. Stagger gave you a map. I want it back. It’s rightfully mine; I killed the last guy who owned it.”
Bigsby wiped sweat from his eyes as he contemplated this bit of mercenary logic.
Infidel continued: “I’m willing to pay a reward for the map. We’ll call it a finder’s fee.”
Bigsby swallowed hard. His eyes kept darting from Infidel toward the door on the side wall. I’d been in this shop a hundred times; there was nothing behind that door except for a small porch, and stairs leading down to the dock where he traded with the pygmies. Was he thinking of making a run for it?
As I looked at the door, I felt a strange sensation, like the hair on my neck rising, if I’d still had hair, or a neck. I could barely hear a faint, distant buzz. I watched Bigsby’s eyes. He wasn’t thinking of running. He was afraid of whatever was lurking on the porch.
He whispered, not looking Infidel in the face, “I’m sorry, b-but I don’t know anything about a m-map.”
“We both know you’re lying,” said Infidel, cracking her knuckles. “I’m trying to be nice, but I’m prepared to be nasty. Don’t be stupid.”
The Bigsby I knew wasn’t stupid. Nor was he all that brave. Which made his next move all the more shocking. On the short stool, he barely came up to Infidel’s waist. This meant that the hilt of my bone-handled knife, sitting in the boot-sheath, was at the level of his bent knee, on which his hand rested. It took only a fraction of a second for his hand to dart out and grab the knife. He thrust it upward into Infidel’s belly, shouting, “I’m sick and tired of being bullied!”
The knife had the expected effect, ripping a button from my old shirt as it slid along her impervious skin.
She reached down and hooked two fingers into Bigsby’s nostrils and lifted him to eye level. Bigsby raised his hands to grab at her fingers, a dumb move considering he had a knife in his hands. He cut a gash across his cheek, nearly blinding himself. The blade tumbled from his fingers, landing upright in the floor as Infidel growled, “And I’m sick and tired of your little game!”
I barely paid attention to her words. There was a line of blood along the edge of the knife. As it slowly rolled down, forming a red bead, I once again had the sensation of a heartbeat. I waved my phantom fingers before my face as they materialized. I sucked in a ghost breath, savoring the sensation.
“If you like to play games so much, let’s play one called ‘hotter, colder,’” Infidel said as she spun Bigsby around like a fish on a gaff. He squealed from the pain. “When I get closer to the map, you call out ‘hotter!’ When I move away from it, say, ‘colder!’”
Bigsby’s eyes flicked once more to the door to the porch.
“Outside, huh? Through that door?” she said. She didn’t wait for his answer.
He didn’t say ‘hotter’ or ‘colder’ as she reached for the doorknob. Instead, he jabbered, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!”
My foggy guts knotted as she touched the doorknob.
She yanked the door open and stared into the burlap-covered crotch of a man who had to be a dozen feet tall. Only his legs and lower torso could be seen. The rest of his body was above the level of the doorframe. An impossibly large hand with nine fingers clamped over Infidel’s face. Bigsby tumbled from her grasp. The giant jerked Infidel from her feet and flung her far out over the dark waters of the bay. I could hear her curses fade off into the distance, until at last there was a faint, faraway splash.
Bigsby curled into a fetal position where he fell, his hands clamped over his bleeding nose. A hunchback suddenly stuck his head into the room from behind the giant. His whole body was concealed beneath a tattered gray cloak; his head hung so low beneath the misshapen lump of his back that it was nearly even with his waist. He supported his ill-distributed weight with a gnarled staff, grasped with equally gnarled fingers. His hands were wrapped tightly in filthy brown gauze; not a single inch of flesh was visible. Beneath his hood, his face was concealed by a burlap sack; blood-red eyes peered through two holes. The inhuman eyes made my ghost skin crawl. I moved in closer for a better look, trying to fathom what manner of creature this might be. The hunchback cast a baleful glare toward me.
Though he didn’t say anything, I heard a voice whisper, “This is none of your concern, blood-ghost.” Invisible hands grasped my limbs and pushed me back. They lost their strength as they reached the bone-handled knife, but I couldn’t move any closer. I was frightened by this stranger and scared for Infidel, yet also weirdly excited. He saw me?
“Can you hear me?” I asked.
The hooded man turned his head to look at Bigsby, ignoring my question. But, the way he held his body, it looked like he was choosing to ignore me; I was certain he’d heard my words.
“Pull yourself together,” said the hunchback, staring down at Bigsby. “She won’t be bothering you again. Patch has disposed of her.”
Patch, apparently, was the giant. At the sound of his name, the creature squatted in the doorway. He proved to be far more misshapen than the hunchback. All his features were twice the normal size. His arms were bare, and his biceps looked like they were woven from at least three different sets of arms; long, dark-threaded stitches held his patchwork flesh together. His face was almost impossible to look at. The left half and right half of his face were different shades, and the scalp and brow were a different tone entirely. He’d plainly been sewn together from the skin of more than one man.
When Bigsby remained in his fetal ball, the hunchback turned to the giant and said, “Carry him.”
Patch stretched his long arm through the doorway and scooped the dwarf up in his enormous grasp, cradling him to his chest like an infant. The tall man’s eyes were dead and lifeless. His mouth hung in a limp gape that gave no hint of expression. His lips and gray tongue were bone dry; he didn’t look as if he were breathing.
Patch started to rise, placing his free hand on the railing of the porch to steady himself. Suddenly, Infidel dropped from the sky, straight down, as if she’d been hanging from the moon. An aura of water droplets enveloped her as she drove her boots into the back of the giant’s neck. The brute dropped Bigsby, who bounced inside the doorway, as the porch collapsed beneath the giant’s weight.
The hunchback slowly shook his head as he looked at the empty doorway where his monster had just stood. He grumbled, “One must admire her persistence.”
From below, there was a rapid series of loud, wet smacks, the sound that a sledgehammer makes when it hits a cow between the eyes.
With the hunchback’s attention focused elsewhere, I felt free to move again. I peered down onto the docks, where Infidel was raining blow after blow onto the giant’s gut. The huge man didn’t seem to feel it. He rose to one knee, his dead eyes gazing in her approximate direction. His right fist pumped out like a piston and Infidel flew off as if she’d been shot from a bow, smacking into the thick pilings that supported the nearby pier. The logs cracked, but halted Infidel’s flight. Her arms flailed like a rag-doll as she dropped face first into the tar-black mud that covered this area at ebb tide.
“Infidel!” I screamed as I stared down into the muck.
The hunchback winced. I was shouting only inches from his ear.
“You
can
hear me,” I said.
He glared at me. Then, he turned, hobbling across the room, his staff clacking on the wooden floor. He reached the knife. My vaporous fingers failed to halt his wrist as he snatched it up. He studied the knife for a long moment. I could definitely see that his eyes weren’t human. They looked more like the eyes of a snake, with vertical slits. What skin I could see around the eyes was dark red and scaly.
“It is not the role of the dead to be inquisitive,” he scolded. He lifted his crooked fingers to the blade, and drew the bandages that covered them along the thin remnant of blood. My ghost body faded once more. He tilted his head to where I’d last stood. “But it may be that I can find other uses for you.”
He tucked the knife into a pocket hidden in the folds of his cloak, then walked back to the door. Suddenly, the whole room shuddered. The pots and pans in the kitchen next door clattered as they fell from their ceiling hooks. The hunchback was nearly thrown from his feet, staggering until he reached the wall, where he regained his balance. He peered once more out the open door.
Infidel was tricky to see in the darkness, as she was now black as ink, the twin specks of her eyes the only clean spots left on her. She was perched in the center of the giant’s shoulders, pounding his head with rapid-fire blows. The sewn-together scalp had come apart, revealing bones held together with thick copper wires. The beast groped around, awkwardly fumbling, until he found her leg. He snatched her free and slammed her into the dock with his full strength. The building shuddered from the shockwave. The giant tried to pick Infidel up again, but she grabbed the edge of the dock with her iron grasp and his fingers slipped from her mud-slicked leg.