The Mortal Shackles Read online

  September 2019 Volume 9 No 5

  The Mortal Shackles

  by

  Christopher A. Jos

  Quillen crouched at the cliff’s edge, the barrel of his rifle protruding over the remnants of a jagged stone slab. His elbow rested upon the flesh above one knee, stock pressed into the crook of his opposite shoulder.

  It was almost time.

  Three horse-drawn wagons rushed along the dirt road across an endless expanse of parched and dusty plain. Despite looking nearly identical to other such drab vehicles found across the Wilds, these covered transports hid something far more valuable within. Gold and silver coins of various denominations. Firearms, ammunition, precious stones, even raw emptherra ore.

  But armed men would be hiding inside as well. The gang’s sources had confirmed it.

  “What’s taking so long, marksman?”

  Quillen glanced sideways at Fleur Augustine from under his wide-brimmed hat. The woman’s left eye peered through an extended metal spyglass at the scene below, her right concealed beneath a faded gray bandage.

  “About time these merchants got wise to our presence,” Augustine’s words betrayed the hint of a Lamarian accent. A subtle inflection―the lengthening of every vowelled syllable. “Not that hiring those Coltons will do them much good. Bunch of glorified bounty hunters.”

  Her other arm was wrapped around the shoulders of a mousy looking girl pressed against her chest. The child looked about ten or so, posture stiff, matted brown hair obscuring her downcast eyes and freckled face.

  Quillen repositioned the rifle barrel, but didn’t take aim yet. The men in the wagons would be armed with the same lever-action Wexlers as him, a weapon that still felt extremely foreign. If only he’d had his Vicrosse rifle instead with its -longer reach and far more familiar weight. But it had been too great a risk to carry about, especially if someone out here recognized it.

  “Well? What’re you waiting for?” Augustine collapsed the spyglass and glared at him. Breaking daylight reflected off the hilts of two combat knives and a holstered revolver at her waist. Dark red tattoos in a freefall blood splatter pattern adorned the joints of her elbows.

  “Patience, Miss Augustine,” Quillen said.

  Augustine grabbed the girl’s chin and raised it toward the passing wagons. “Dear One, you mustn’t look away now. The show’s about to start.”

  But the girl’s eyes remained fixed to the ground. Augustine had forced her to watch every one of these waylays ever since Quillen first joined them all those months ago.

  “No more slip-ups, marksman.” Augustine stroked the girl’s hair and hummed a soft tune, a series of long notes ascending and descending in a simple yet wistful melody.

  Quillen ignored the crooning and aligned the rifle’s sight. The wagon drivers were almost in range―a trio of men in dust-caked traveler’s clothes.

  He took a deep breath. Held, exhaled, paused. Three counts.

  An empty shell casing flew free of the ejection chamber with each successive shot, a fresh round taking its place.

  Blood sprayed. The two drivers in the lead wagons tumbled from the benches onto the rocky ground. The third driver clutched his upper arm, but didn’t fall.

  A miss.

  Quillen tugged at the thin steel collar wrapped around his neck. Oblivion take him―he should’ve made that shot. A misjudgment of the distance? Competing crosswinds? Augustine’s cursed singing? He readied to fire again.

  But there was no need. The first two wagons veered off the narrow dirt road, the third driver releasing the reins before slumping forward. Several of the Coltons poked their heads out from the transports’ coverings and scrambled into the empty front benches.

  Quillen lowered his rifle.

  “Wonderful!” Augustine’s lips parted in a wide grin. “Splendid work!”

  She placed two fingers into her mouth and whistled. Sixteen long-coated riders appeared at the base of the cliff, their exposed elbows revealing the same blood splatter tattoos as she had. They charged ahead with rifles raised.

  The Coltons pointed and shouted, a tangle of legs and turquoise armbands scrambling for their own weapons. Augustine’s riders surrounded the wagons in a circle formation, one Quillen had seen them use many times before.

  The shootout was over in minutes―and the plains returned to silence.

  Though Quillen was well over a hundred marks out from the slaughter, the scents of blood and explosive powder drifted toward him upon the breeze. Four of Augustine’s men lay motionless in the dust, the three wagon drivers scattered among nine other Colton corpses.

  Which was nothing out of the usual. Augustine had never been one for taking captives.

  “Did you enjoy the show, Dear One?” Augustine squeezed the girl’s shoulder, but the child recoiled from her touch. “Someday, you’ll appreciate my work as much as I do. There’s no greater pleasure in this world than the art of a well-executed waylay.”

  The girl kept her eyes lowered, same as always. Quillen shook his head.

  Two of the wagons were still intact. The third lolled off to one side, its spoked wheels crooked beyond saving. A dozen of Augustine’s men searched the bodies for coins and keepsakes, the rest grappling with the reins atop the now vacant drivers’ benches.

  A man’s phlegm-filled cough and subsequent spit caused Quillen to glance behind him. A pair of clean-shaved ruffians in dark coats lounged among the rocks, a line of four charcoal Slatedancer horses stationed beside them. Calloused hands gripped the gun belts at their hips, eyes darting between Quillen and the scene below.

  “What’re you still doing here, marksman?” Augustine wrapped her arms tighter around the girl. “Go and join the others.”

  Quillen rose to his feet. He slung his rifle over one shoulder and crossed toward a restless Slatedancer at the edge of the line, Augustine’s gaze following him the entire way. He mounted up and angled the beast down the steep slope leading into the rocky plain.

  The mousy girl flashed him a shy smile on the way past and Quillen returned a nod. Fleur Augustine had no idea just how valuable that ‘Dear One’ of hers truly was.

  #

  Quillen stood on picket duty near the perimeter of a shallow rock formation. The stolen wagons lay parked near the center of the gang’s makeshift camp, encircling the embers of a dying bonfire and the bedrolls of Augustine’s snoring men.

  Though he tried to keep vigil upon the surrounding open plains, Quillen’s gaze continued to wander toward the faint inkling of stars shimmering in a darkened sky. Auralia and Argentius were in their waxing phases tonight, wide crescents of gold and silver gleaming in solemn prominence.

  Quillen adjusted the shoulder strap on his rifle. Four hours in and there’d been nothing of note save for a lone string cricket resting atop the lowest branch of a spindled nettle tree. The transparent creature perched in full view of the moonlight, back legs rubbing together, antennae extended in a mournful courting call. A dozen other crickets responded in kind, hidden among the jagged rocks and stocky thornshrubs. Their symphony had long since been his favorite part of these forays into the Wilds, the only place in the known world he’d ever heard such a song.

  Boots scraped upon the slated stone. The insects went silent. Several familiar figures approached the distant camp perimeter. Quillen made an instinctual reach for the revolver at his side.

  Three men and one woman, though his eyes were drawn only to the last. Emilia Warrick, Imperial Court Magistrate of the Delmiran Empire, proceeded forward alone. She was just shy of middle age, dressed in a tight woven collared shirt and a vermilion cloak.

  Quillen gave her a stiff bow.

  “So, gunner,” Warrick said. “Did the incident this afternoon go as
planned?"

  Quillen nodded. Never mind he failed to kill a target with what should’ve been a simple shot.

  “I trust you’re not drawing too much attention to yourself,” Warrick said.

  His fingers brushed against the Wexler rifle barrel slung over his shoulder. “Most of the gang doesn’t like what I do.”

  “Nor should they. What of this Fleur?”

  “She’s happy to make use of me.” And in more ways than one―especially in recent weeks.

  “Approach.”

  The paired moons cast Warrick’s impassive expression in a clash of discordant light, though he could barely sense the magistrate’s heartbeat despite how close she was. Their shared link should’ve made her presence impossible to ignore.

  Warrick reached for the steel collar about his throat, but Quillen’s gaze settled instead upon the Imperial Signet ring wrapped around the fourth finger of her left hand. The gold band bore the official seal of the Delmiran Empire―an alabaster swan in flight. Warrick’s most dangerous weapon.

  A long line of silver emptherra bracelets fastened about her wrists emitted a harsh ashen light, as did the collar about Quillen’s own neck. The metal felt warm against his skin.

  “Are you enjoying the mortal experience so far, gunner?” she asked. “You probably don't remember much of what it was like.”

  Quillen remained mute. There was no reason to answer her, not unless she Compelled him to. His eyes lingered upon both Warrick’s ring and her bracelets. An Imperial Court magistrate with her own unique talents.

  But Warrick seemed unconcerned with his silence. She ran her nails across the collar’s surface―a remnant artifact of a civilization long since gone.

  “That added charge should be enough to keep it functional,” she said, “but the device will need another replenishing soon.”

  She withdrew her hands, and Quillen prodded at the steel clasp. He’d glimpsed his own strange reflection in the windows of countless settlements Augustine and her Blood Splatter Gang had passed through. Ashen hair turned blond, mismatching irises of crimson and violet now a uniform brown. An intended side effect of the collar. Without it, his features would be far too recognizable, even out here.

  “How much longer am I to remain in these outlaws’ company?” he asked.

  “Until I say so,” Warrick smirked at him. “Stay close to the girl, keep her safe. Continue doing whatever’s necessary to endear yourself to her and to Fleur’s gang. Our work here’s almost finished.”

  Quillen shook his head. All this trouble for just one child. “There must be a hundred others like her in this region of the Desolate Plains alone and thousands more across the Wilds.”

  Warrick removed a small hourglass from her coat pocket, a thick metallic frame surrounding the artifact’s bulbous glass tubes. Coarse emptherra shavings bubbled up from its lower chamber into the one above.

  “The Horologe shows the girl to be an ideal candidate to brave the Cairns.” Warrick held the strange hourglass up to the moonlight. Another of the ancient Zir’s wondrous artifacts. “As do my instincts.”

  An Horologe never made a mistake in its selection, and in all the years Quillen had known the magistrate, Warrick’s purported instincts had seldom been wrong, either. The girl couldn’t possibly know what fate awaited her now.

  “I’ll have more instructions for you soon,” Warrick said. “In the meantime―stay here with Fleur and the girl.”

  She returned the hourglass to her cloak and strode back toward the three awaiting figures. Lawmen from the nearby fortified town of Aurora Gulch, if their dust-laden coats were any indication. Quillen recognized the tall, bald one in the middle as Constable Jerome Hendry. Seemed like Magistra Warrick had been making some powerful friends out here. No doubt the lawmen had their own reasons for wanting Augustine and her Blood Splatter Gang caught or killed.

  Hopefully his time among them would be over soon enough.

  #

  The stolen wagons trundled on through the main street of the Pebblemouth settlement. A dozen of Augustine’s men rode ahead to secure the area, rifles and revolvers brandished on full display. Quillen angled his hat against the shifting daylight. This was the third such community they’d visited in as many weeks.

  Only a single constable and his two deputies were on watch, all too easy to herd into the local lawman’s office and keep under guard. They offered little protest, especially when outnumbered ten to one.

  As for the rest of the settlers―they knew what to do.

  Doors were shut tight, window curtains pulled. A Wexler muzzle and a few rough shoves helped along a pair of elderly women who moved slower than they should’ve. With the streets clear, several of Augustine’s men shared a cackle before heading for the nearby saloon.

  Augustine surveyed the settlement from the driver’s bench of the lead wagon, one hand on the reins, the other about the girl. Quillen brought his Slatedancer to a halt beside her, though the beast seemed eager to continue on. The two dark-coated ruffians waited on her other side.

  “Go and join the others,” she said.

  Quillen clucked to his mount and the horse edged forward.

  “Not you.” Augustine pointed to the darkcoats. “Them.”

  “Fleur.” The first one spoke with a heavy settler’s drawl. “Then who’s gonna watch you?”

  “Him.” Augustine jabbed a finger at Quillen.

  “What?” the second darkcoat said. “But he’s―”

  “I told you to join the others,” Augustine said. “Why’re you still here?”

  The darkcoats exchanged a long look before urging their mounts down the street. The first gave Quillen a passing glare; the second spat at his feet.

  Quillen maintained his impassive facade. If things continued on like this, a darkcoat’s knife in the night might be coming for him soon.

  “Yesterday’s waylay went well, marksman.” Augustine hopped off the driver’s bench and lifted the girl down with her. “Guarding me and my Dear One will be your reward today.” The glint in her eye was all too familiar. The rest of his ‘reward’ would come later, under the light of the moons.

  Quillen left his Slatedancer beside the wagon and followed Augustine and the girl into the settlement on foot. Pebblemouth wasn’t much to look at. Little more than a single street with a line of box-shaped mincewood buildings. Quick to build, quick to burn, and at the mercy of the Desolate Plains’s occasional but violent dust storms.

  “Today’s a very special day.” Augustine wrapped her arm tighter around the girl, her head tilted skyward. “It’s been exactly a year since my beloved Dear One and I found each other, and the first of what’ll be many more spent together.”

  They passed the brightly painted signs noting the land office, the blacksmith, and the stables. A dozen of Augustine’s men lingered about the main street on patrol, every shop door closed and window curtain drawn.

  Though Quillen trailed behind, the girl’s fingers made an occasional reach for his hand. Accidental? Deliberate? He tucked his arms behind his back, his patchy leather coat creaking with each step. Either way―best not to let Augustine see it.

  Their final stop was the general store near the settlement’s center. A tiny copper bell tied to the framed glass door chimed upon their entry. The drab shelves on Quillen’s right were lined with a sparse offering of clay plates, wooden dolls, and ceramic teapots. Sachets of dried herbs, murky liquor, and colorful jars of candy cluttered the remaining shelves on his left.

  The shopkeeper―a bald man with a graying beard and a black bow tie―dusted the countertop with a soiled rag, though the surface didn’t look as if it needed any more polish.

  “Dear One,” Augustine said, “to celebrate this wonderful day, you’re free to pick out whatever you want.” She pointed to the candy-laden shelves, a wide smile on her lips.

  The girl hesitated a moment before straying toward the sweets―an item the store seemed to have in odd abundance. Chocolate flakes, bright suga
r ribbons, cubed toffee, even chewing gum. But she didn’t stay there for long.

  Quillen watched her wander to the store’s opposite side. The girl ran her fingers over a matching set of porcelain dishes before settling upon a small wooden rack of labeled spice jars. She unscrewed the lids and inhaled their scents, one after the other.

  Augustine’s smile faded. The girl returned to her with two of the glass containers. Quillen recognized the pale green needles and coarse amber grains―shimmering ivy and dry safflower.

  “Why in Oblivion’s name would you want those, Dear One?” Augustine made a puckered face. “Girls are supposed to like dolls and sweet things.”

  But the girl didn’t move. She continued to hold out the spices for Augustine.

  “No,” Augustine said. “Put them back.”

  The girl clutched the jars to her chest. Augustine took a step forward, and the girl retreated.

  “Dear One.” A smile creased Augustine’s lips again, but the sides of her mouth twitched. “Don’t make me angry.”

  She took another step forward and the girl recoiled further. Augustine glared at the shopkeeper, who continued to polish his immaculate countertop.

  “You did mention she could pick out whatever she wanted, Miss Augustine,” Quillen said.

  Augustine rounded on him, fingers flexing, jaw clenched tight. Quillen stood his ground, but fought the urge to make his own retreat. Perhaps siding with the girl had been a mistake.

  Augustine’s piercing gaze lingered on him a moment longer before she crossed toward the counter. “I’ll be taking those.” She made a jabbing motion at the spice jars in the girl’s arms.

  The shopkeeper ignored her, continuing to wipe the soiled rag back and forth across the glossy surface. He must’ve known who Augustine was. No doubt the entire region did by now.

  “Did you hear me?” Augustine said again.

  Still no response.

  A flick of her wrist. Augustine jammed a knife blade into the counter―right between the cleaning rag and the shopkeeper’s outstretched fingers.

  Now the man looked up.

  “It’s very impolite to ignore a lady―especially when she’s a paying customer.” Augustine drew a second knife, peering at her distorted reflection in the flat of the blade. “Got any news to share?”