I felt sentimental as Infidel climbed from the creaking gangplank onto my old boat. She grabbed at rigging and rails as she moved across the slanted deck. I’ve lived my life askew — the mud-locked boat sits at a ten-degree tilt. An objective man would describe the place as a hovel. To me, the place was the closest thing I’ve ever had to home.
If you witnessed my vagabond lifestyle, you’d never suspect that not so long ago my family was wealthy. My great-grandfather was the famous — or perhaps infamous — Ambitious Merchant. Merchant is a family name stretching back generations, and it’s common for followers of the Church of the Book to name their children after desirable virtues. Seldom has a man been more suitably monikered. Ambitious made a fortune in the slave trade, with Commonground as his base. The river-pygmies have enslaved forest-pygmies for centuries, but it was my ancestor who realized that these squat, muscular men could be sold as a commodity to the mines on the Isle of Storm. The trade goes on to this day, though my family no longer has any role in it.
The so-called pirate wars had more to do with the slave trade than with actual piracy. Many Wanderers regard slaves as just another cargo, which doesn’t seem to mesh with their claims to hold freedom as the highest virtue. A band of radical Wanderers had taken a stand against the slave trade, going so far as to raid ships and free the captives. For this, they were branded as pirates, and wound up with every navy in the world united against them. Infidel had signed on to a losing cause from the start.
While I’ve never gone so far as to take up arms to oppose the slave trade, I’ve always had a gut dislike of the practice, and have never been shy about sharing my views. The business corrupts everyone, especially the river-pygmies. They think of forest-pygmies as animals, when anyone can see they’re the same race, just of differing hues. Each of the three major pygmy tribes dye their skin with jungle berries: forest-pygmies are green, river-pygmies blue, lava-pygmies orange. Wash them off with vinegar and they’re all fish-belly white. My grandfather, Judicious Merchant, son of Ambitious, discovered that the bitter dyes were an effective mosquito repellent, which is why I remember him with dark green skin.
Judicious had been trained to take up the family business until he made the mistake of actually talking to the pygmies. They told him tales of the Vanished Kingdom, a once great nation on this island, its monuments now buried beneath roots and vines. My grandfather burned through a great deal of the family wealth with his elaborate expeditions into the jungle. Judicious bore a son by a forest-pygmy woman; this was my father, Studious Merchant. As a teen, Studious aided his father by traveling to the Monastery of the Book, home of the world’s most extensive library. He went to these archives to read everything that had ever been written about the Vanished Kingdom. But, while he was there, he grew to love the prayerful, contemplative life of the monks and joined their order. As a monk, father had his flaws. My existence is testimony to his difficulty with the vow of celibacy.
I’m told my mother was a prostitute who abandoned me on the monastery’s doorstep. I’ve never even learned her name. I was raised in an orphanage run by the monks. My father taught there, but barely acknowledged me. Every three or four years, my grandfather, Judicious, would visit and tell me stories about his jungle adventures. He said that when I was old enough, he’d take me with him. I never saw him after my tenth birthday, when he’d given me the knife. I eventually reached Commonground on my own when I was seventeen, but no one had seen my grandfather in years. The jungle had swallowed him long ago.
My grandfather had owned the sailboat Infidel now stood upon; in his day, it was quite a vessel. As years passed with my grandfather absent from Commonground, the boat had been looted. Pretty much everything that hadn’t been nailed down had been stripped, along with a fair share of stuff that had been nailed down. The husk was still anchored at the docks when I got to town, and no one protested when I moved in.
Infidel pushed aside the torn curtain that led into the small shack I’d built from cast-off lumber. She found the duffel bag of clothes she kept stashed in the rafters and tossed her sarong onto the floor. I’d never seen her naked when I was alive, but this was the second time since I’d died I’d gotten to see her full glory. Yet, her nudity didn’t provoke lust. All my ordinary desires seem muted. Since dying, I haven’t felt hungry or sleepy. Of greater interest is that I haven’t felt thirsty. Perhaps I should be relieved. My afterlife truly would be hell if I were tormented by desires I had no hope of slaking. Still, it seems wasteful to finally look at Infidel’s body and feel only dispassionate appreciation of her symmetry.
She pulled on a pair of canvas breeches, but frowned as she looked through her various blouses. Many were blood stained and torn; she always was hard on clothes. She pitched aside the duffel and picked up one of my old shirts from the back of a chair, holding it to her face to sniff it. At first, I thought she must have found the scent unpleasant; her eyes began to water. Then, she hugged the shirt to her chest as she closed her eyes tightly. After a moment, she composed herself, slipping the shirt on, rolling up the too-long sleeves and cinching up the dangling shirt tails with her thick leather belt. She dug around under the bunk and found an old pair of boots she’d left here. In the jungle, she normally went barefoot. However, the boardwalks of Commonground were littered with things no sane person would want squishing between their toes. She shoved my bone-handled knife into the boot sheath, then rooted under the bed until she produced the scabbard that held my old saber.
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.
The 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.
She spun around, eyes narrowed as he tried once more to grab her, this time aiming for her head. As his arm closed in on her face, she clamped his wrist with both hands, then kicked both legs into the pit of his arm. She stretched out, her body straight as a board. With a sound like a branch breaking, the arm snapped free of the shoulder and she fell back to the deck with the severed limb. The giant stumbled backwards, off balance. No blood came from his wound.
Infidel rolled, rising to her knees, shaking her head slowly. Her body shuddered as she took a deep breath. She seemed not to notice that the patchwork man had regained his footing. He lumbered toward her, his remaining hand outstretched.
At the last second, she sprung up with a growl, swinging his liberated arm back over her head, two-handed, like an axe. Her growl turned into a grunt as she swung the limb, smashing it directly into his face. The blow knocked Patch from his feet and he fell to the dock on his back. Infidel sneered as she stomped down on his left ankle, pulverizing the bones.
Infidel lighted on the center of his chest, digging her fingers into the folds of sewn together flesh, ripping it open. She made short work of his rib cage, bones and wires flying into the night. The creature possessed no internal organs. Where his heart should have been, there was only a small golden box secured by silver rods. The giant’s remaining hand grabbed her by the hair as she reached into his chest cavity and tore the box free. She popped it between her fingers, the lid flying open. It was difficult to see clearly, but what looked like a large, white mosquito buzzed up from the open container. It was at least two inches long, and glowed with an internal fire. It shot upward, like a shooting star in reverse, and vanished among its brethren in the sparkling firmament.
The giant no longer moved. Infidel made certain it never would again, as she snapped every bone and dried up muscle that she touched, tossing the fragments out into the bay. In a matter of minutes, the beast was completely disassembled; all that remained were the shredded remnants of his impossibly large pants.
She turned her face toward the doorway, twenty feet above. The hunchback met her gaze. Without warning, she leapt.
The hunchback calmly stepped aside as she flew into the room. She nearly tripped over Bigsby, who was still curled up on the floor, whimpering. Skidding to a halt in her muddy boots, Infidel whipped around. A trail of black mud splattered the walls like paint, stinking of dead fish and rotten eggs. She quickly spotted the hunchback, who held an open palm toward her.
“You seek the map,” he said. “It’s not here. Calm yourself, and I will tell you all you wish to know.”
Infidel straightened up from her fighting crouch. She was still seething. The hunchback held his ground as she moved toward him. I was certain the creature had misplayed his hand. She paused before him, reaching out to grab his cloak. But, instead of yanking the hunchback off his feet, she wiped her muddy face, using the gray tatters of his cape like a towel. Ordinarily, these dingy rags were the last thing anyone would use for cleaning, but after you’ve rolled in Commonground muck, pretty much everything is more sanitary than you are.
I was heartbroken when she dropped the edge of the cloak. She was bleeding, her own blood this time. Her right eyebrow sported a gash at least an inch long. There was a knot just above this big as a hen’s egg. Her nose was bleeding from both nostrils. When she spoke, I could see blood pooling around her gums.
“I’m listening,” she said.
“Bigsby sold the map to a man named Ivory Blade. You know him.”
Infidel nodded. “He’s King Brightmoon’s top spy.”
“Correct. The king was quick to recognize the importance of the map. Even now, a ship of his warriors is under sail, heading for the Isle of Fire.”
I suddenly put two and two together. I knew why the Black Swan hadn’t been free to give Infidel the Three Goons.
The hunchback continued: “Blade has been recruiting local talent to aid in the quest. I intended to offer the services of Patch. Now, I intend to offer you.”
“I’m not yours to offer,” said Infidel.
“You need not play coy,” said the hunchback. “We share a mutual goal. We each have our reasons for wanting to reach Greatshadow’s lair. The simplest path forward is to assist the king’s team. He’s assembled the finest warriors at his command, masters of both physical and spiritual warfare. Earlier this evening, you sought to hire the Three Goons. You’ll still be able to fight by their side; you just won’t have to pay their wages.”
Infidel shook her head as she walked away from the hunchback. “I’m not really a team player. I could get along with the Goons for a couple of weeks, but put me together with a bunch of knights and priests and I kill someone.”
“Indeed,” said the hunchback. “You’re perfectly suited to such a task.”
Infidel toed around the shattered slivers of barrel that littered the floor.
“You see a knife around here?” she asked. I saw she’d also lost my saber; it was probably out in the middle of the bay.
The hunchback produced the blade from his pocket and held it toward her.
“This knife belonged to your friend,” he said. “You think of it as your last link to him.”
She scowled as she snatched the knife from his grasp. “What are you, some kind of mind-reader?”
“Yes,” he said. “Your thoughts are not a secret from me, Infidel. I could deceive you and not reveal this fact. But, I want you to know that I am not without my talents. If we form a partnership, we each have something to gain.”
Infidel kicked most of the muck off her leg, then slid the knife back into her boot. Dark sludge bubbled up around the hilt as it sank into the sheath. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m not looking for any new friends.”
“I’m not offering friendship, Infidel. Only an alliance.”
She stared at him. “It seems unfair that you know my name, while you get to remain a mystery. Who the hell are you?”
The hunchback chuckled. “Who indeed? As difficult as it may be to believe, I’ve lived my life without a name. I was cast out to die at birth.”
“How tragic. But you still must have a name.” Infidel said. “A relic like you can’t have made it this far without someone calling you something.”
“And yet, it is so.”
“Well, today’s your lucky day. From now on, you’ll be called ‘Lumpy.’”
The hunchback cocked his head, unsure if she was joking. I was pretty sure she wasn’t. Infidel didn’t like her own nickname much, and compensated by sticking others with bad ones. After her debut at the Black Swan, people called her Ripper and she liked it. Then, a month later, she’d been sitting at the bar when a wild-eyed man in a black robe burst through the door, shouted, “Infidel!” then broke his knife stabbing her in the back. The name might not have stuck, except the scene repeated itself about nine times over the next year. Everyone at the bar started calling her Infidel, and eventually I made the switch as well. She’s never volunteered what she did to piss off the fanatics, and I’ve never asked. The rule is, what happens outside Commonground, stays outside Commonground.
The hunchback rubbed his chin as he contemplated his need for a sobriquet. “You called me a relic. This will suffice.”
“Relic?” she said with a smirk. She thought it was a lousy name.
The hunchback nodded.
“Well, Relic, it’s nice meeting you, but it’s been a long day, and I’ve got a headache like you wouldn’t believe.”
“I believe you,” said Relic. “I feel your pain.”
“Whatever,” she said, heading toward the door with a dismissive wave. “Have fun on your dragon hunt.”
“Lord Tower is leading the quest,” said Relic.
Infidel froze in her tracks. Her eyes widened. I wasn’t surprised she knew who Lord Tower was; he was easily the most famous knight in the Shining Lands. Still, what did that matter to her?
Relic said, “He’s carrying a weapon that can actually slay Greatshadow.”
“Which one?” she asked, not looking back. “The Gloryhammer?”
“Something much, much more dangerous.”
Infidel pondered this, shook her head, then kept walking.
“After Tower slays the dragon, your job will be to kill the knight.”
Infidel spun on her heels. She eyed Bigsby, who’d uncurled sufficiently from his fetal ball to stare at her. “Go fix me a tub of boiling water,” she said. “And find me soap. Lots and lots of soap.”
Bigsby nodded as he stood, then scampered off.
Infidel leaned against the wall. She spat a gob of pink spittle into the middle of the floor.
“I’m not promising anything,” she said. “But let’s hear your plan.”