The Finisher

UNDEVIGINTI: Truly Alone

I STARED UP AT the hulking doors to the Care. It was long after visiting time, but I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to be with the family I had left.

I had already looked around for Non but hadn’t seen him anywhere. The git was probably off patrolling as part of the Carbineers. I drew my tools from my cloak pocket, inserted them in the lock of the huge door, and I was soon on my way down the corridor.

The light was dimmer in my parents’ room at night it seemed, though I could still make them out. Each of course was lying in their cot. They couldn’t move. They couldn’t speak. That was okay. I planned on doing the talking.

I stood between the cots because I wanted to address them at the same time. I didn’t know where the words came from, I really didn’t. But I was soon pouring out my heart to them, complaining of wretched injustice, poor Quentin, fiendish jabbits, walls of blood, lost brothers, insufferable Council members like Jurik Krone, vile Outliers, and Wormwood simply going mad on me. I told them I wanted them back. No, I needed them to come back to me. I was all alone. Then I ran completely out of words and just stood there, tears running down my cheeks as I stared at the two Wugs who had brought me into Wormwood and who had not uttered a word or moved a muscle for over two sessions.

A sliver later I was rubbing my eyes because I could not believe what I was seeing. My father’s cot was vibrating. No, my father was vibrating. In fact, he was shaking so hard that I was afraid he would simply fly apart. When I looked at my mother, the exact same thing was occurring to her. I rushed forward to seize them, to stop whatever was happening to them.

I had to leap back to avoid being killed.

Towers of fire had sprouted from both cots at the same time. They rose together to the ceiling and then started to swirl in a circular motion, like a fierce, fiery funnel of wind trying to escape the narrow confines of whatever was trapping it.

I leapt farther back as the flames threatened to engulf the room, and slammed against the hard wall. My eyes were so wide I felt as if there was no space left on my face to contain them. I screamed. The flames leapt higher. I looked around the room for something to put out the fire. There was a pitcher of water on a stand against the wall. I grabbed it and hurled the liquid against the inferno. It splashed back in my face, repelled by the flames, though I couldn’t imagine how.

I screamed, “Mum! Dad!”

They had to be burned to nothing by now, the heat was so intense. But still, I desperately looked around for something, anything, to use to defeat the flames. There was a stack of sheets on another table. I wrapped them in my arms, bent to the floor and soaked them in the spilled water from the pitcher.

I charged the twin maelstroms of fire, whirling the cloths that were now heavy with water. I was going to beat the fire out and save my parents. Or what was left of them.

I got no closer than a foot and a half when I was again thrown back toward the wall. I put out my hands to cushion the collision and they took most of the brunt of it, although my shoulder slammed into the hard wall an instant later. I slid down, dazed and sick to my stomach. As I staggered back up, it happened.

And all I could do was watch.

From out of the flames rose my parents. Into the air, up to the ceiling. They were not burned. They were not hurt in any way that I could see. As I looked at their faces, I fell back stunned. Their eyes were open. They seemed to be awake even as the flames devoured them.

I screamed at them again, trying to get them to notice me, but they never looked at me. It was as though I didn’t even exist to them.

And then came a blast of wind and a shriek that was so loud I covered my ringing ears. In a blink of my eyes, they were gone. So were the flames.

I sat there slumped against the wall and stared at two empty cots that were not damaged in any way.

And yet my parents were gone.

I rose on legs that did not feel strong enough to hold my weight. I braced myself with a hand against the wall. My shoulder ached from where I had hit it. My hands were cut and bruised and my face and hair were wet with the water from the pitcher. The doused sheets lay on the floor. All of that had happened. But it was as though the fire had never occurred. I would have doubted that any of it had taken place, except for the fact that I was now alone in the room.

I looked to the ceiling, expecting to see a hole there where my parents had escaped. But it was still simply a ceiling and completely intact.

I bent over and sucked in long breaths. The room did not even smell of smoke. The fresh air quickly replenished my lungs. I kept a hand on the wall as I staggered over to the door, pulled it open and raced down the hall with renewed energy.

I thought I might see my parents soaring through the air and, with the aid of Destin, I could fly with them to wherever they were going.

I reached the front double doors, wrenched one open and hurtled outside. I looked to the sky, desperately hoping to catch a glimpse of them. Then something grabbed me and slammed me down to the ground.

I had no idea how long I had been in my parents’ room, but first light was weakly managing to break through the clouds and the rain. Its dim illumination reflected off the raindrops, making them seem dirty, misshapen.

Then I saw that hulking idiot Non standing there. He was the one who had grabbed me, pushed me down, cost me any chance of following my parents. Waves of rage swept over me, even as Non looked down at me, a malicious grin spreading over his face.

He glittered in the rain, for he was wearing a metal breastplate. Over his shoulder was a long morta. In his belt was a short morta and a dagger. He must have been on patrol.

“Caught you, didn’t I? Breaking into the Care. Valhall for you, female. That’ll teach you not to break rules.”

I tried to get up and he pushed me back down.

“You’ll stand when I say you can and not before.” He touched the barrel of his morta. “Official Council business, I’m on. Lucky for me I came round here to see that things were okay. What, were you stealing from the sick Wugs in there?”

“You idiot,” I screamed. “Get out of my way.”

I jumped to my feet and he tried to slam me back down.

That was a mistake. An enormous one on his part.

When I hit him with my fist, I felt the breastplate bend and then crack under my blow. The next instant, Non toppled to the dirt. I looked down at my hand. It was swollen and bleeding. The impact had carried all the way up my arm to my shoulder and borne with it searing pain. But it was worth it, to unleash my rage, because I couldn’t contain it any longer.

Yet there was Non lying on the ground. He was injured, perhaps dead even. I turned and ran. And then I took a few steps and my feet lifted off the ground and I was flying. I did not really intend this, it just happened. The winds buffeted me but I kept on my straight course through sheer will.

I searched the skies for my parents but they were not there. Where they had gone after leaving their room at the Care in a vortex of fire, I knew not. I just understood that I had lost them, probably forever. What I had seen was not something a Wug would return from. I sobbed even as I flew.

Slivers later I landed on the outskirts of Wormwood. I didn’t want to add flying to my assault against Non. Surely Council would have me in Valhall for a long enough time as it was.

Yet I was still thinking of my parents. How could two Wugs be engulfed in fire and not die? How could the fire transport them from where they were to somewhere else? And do so through a solid ceiling of stone? I could not think of a single answer to those questions. I just knew that my parents were gone and there was nothing I could do about it.

I set out for Wormwood proper and soon reached the cobblestones. I was not looking where I was going. In truth, I was so wonky that I was unsure whether all I had just witnessed was simply a nightmare.

When I heard a low growl, I froze on the spot. Though first light was breaking, the clouds and rain made it still seem dark and the gloom was thick upon Wormwood. The growl came again and then I heard a sharp voice.

“Who is there? Speak now or suffer the consequences of your silence!”

I stepped forward and saw him. Or rather them.

Nida and his black shuck, from whence the growl had come.

Nida was one of the few Wugs belonging to what are known as the Pech race. He was thus short and thick with heavily muscled arm and legs. For sessions I had thought Duf Delphia was a Pech, but he wasn’t. Nida was dressed in corduroy trousers, a leather coat, a wide-brimmed hat to keep both sun and rain away and a pair of amaroc-skin boots. It was said that before he was hired to guard Valhall, he and his shuck had killed an amaroc on the edge of the Quag. If so, I did not want to tangle with either of them, for amarocs are fierce beasts with many ways to kill. Some say they can even shoot poison from their eyes.

“It’s me, Vega Jane.” I had apparently wandered near the prison in the village center.

Nida gazed up at me while his shuck sat next to him, as tall as Nida. He clenched a wooden club in one thick hand. “Leave here, female, now.”

He turned and marched off, his shuck, a canine as large as a calf, obediently following.

When I emerged from the gloom, I could see that only four prisoners were currently being held at Valhall, which had a wooden roof, and bars all around and a dirt floor. Having the prison open to the elements was deemed to make it even more depressing. And being in public, one’s shame was complete.

As I passed by the bars, a Wug slid forward on his belly and spoke to me.

“Cuppa water, female. Mouth’s so dry, feels like sand, don’ it? Please, female, please. Cuppa water. It can be from the rain. Just a cuppa, luv.”

A crash came and I jumped back as something shot past my head. Nida had smashed his club against the bars with such force, part of the wood had splintered off and nearly impaled me.

“You’ll nae speak to lawful Wugs, McCready,” he screeched. “Silence or the next blow will be to your head.”

McCready retreated to a far corner of the cage like a wounded beast.

Nida looked at me. “On your way, female. I will not say again.”

The shuck barked and snapped its jaws. I ran for it.

And something was running after me. I turned and looked back, prepared to run faster or even take flight. But it wasn’t the shuck. It was Harry Two.

I stopped and bent over, panting. Harry Two caught up to me and jumped around my legs, his tongue hanging out. He must have gotten out of my digs somehow and come looking for me. I knelt down and hugged him, and Harry Two calmed as quickly as I did. He licked my face once and then sat on his haunches, gazing up at me.

“You must be hungry,” I said.

We walked back to my home and I fed Harry Two with the last bit of food I had. As he ate by the fireplace, where the flames had long since expired, I sat drenching wet on the floor, my knees to my chest, and gazed around the room. This was all I had now. John was gone. And now our parents were gone too. And with a sickening feeling, I realized that I would have to tell John about our parents. How would he take it? Not well, I thought.

And what would happen when Non told what I had done? Would I end up in Valhall like McCready? Begging for a cuppa water?

“Vega Jane!” the voice called out from the other side of my door.

I turned at the sound of my name. I also recognized the voice. It was Jurik Krone.