Chapter 47

  Heidi

  Heidi and Bahamut: Mighty Hunters, Best Friends. Together they crept through the shady jungle in ambush. Together they applied their strength and their cunning to ensnare their prey. Together they fled from greater beasts. Together, and not apart, they survived many dangers, many fires. When Bahamut was cold, she warmed him with the heat of her body. When she was trapped he was there, rending apart the iron that bound her. They were free. Their life was simple. They were not lonely, not in the least. They had no regrets. No bale thorns would grow from their bones if they died. All of this was enough.

  She awoke slowly, as though rising from the depths of a murky pond. Her dream had been something good, she remembered. Something beautiful, something she wanted–it was slipping away from her. Something about Bahamut. Best Friend.

  Heidi whimpered from the sheer sense of loss as she regained awareness. She didn’t want to be here. She wanted to go back. She wanted…what had it been? Bahamut? Alan?

  The world returned to her piece by piece, filling the confused void left by her forgotten dreams. She was in a dark place. Cold. Metal. Shadows. Monsters. Gravity. Doors. The Bleak Machine, somewhere nearby, turning and turning, shining like a god-forsaken sun, shining through the metal and through her skin and into her bones.

  Bahamut was there with her. She sensed him nearby even before he touched a scaly claw to her arm. So gentle, that claw which could rip the arm off a gorilla-dragon. She knew, somehow, that he was worried about her. She reached out an arm, ignoring a spasm of pain, and he came in for a soft hug. It had to be soft, for most of her torso was bandaged.

  An unhealthy wheezing cough came from the darkness on her other side. It was the kind of cough that made her want to lean away from it. A small creature approached from the shadows that enclosed Heidi and the cot where she lay. It stepped into the dim, slanting light, yellow and stale, from an unseen source behind her. It was Balazar, hacking and rattling with a deathly cough, entirely shrouded in blue and purple bandages. Bits of his beard and moustache peeked out from the wrappings, which gave him an odd appearance that might even have approached humorous were it not for…everything else.

  “I was…poisoned,” said Heidi, since he was hacking to speak for a moment. She remembered now. Their exploration of the ship, their separation by a rue of gargantuan size, the still-painful memories she had experienced when touching the bale thorn, and Vyrix. And Abraham Black.

  She twisted her body first to one side, then the other. She shrugged her shoulders, turned her legs as far as her hips would allow, rolled her hands and feet. Nothing felt broken, though she was a mass of aching bruises. There was a burning tingle on her calf right where her jellyfish scar was, the feel of a long scrape across her back, and of course, the not-so-old bullet wound. Several thin black slashes criss-crossed her body, mostly on her arms and hands. These were scars left from being cut by the rue. Black as pitch, they would apparently never fade. Most people on Orpheus acquired a collection of these black marks over time.

  She became aware that she wore nothing above the waist but the bandages. She spared only a fleeting thought for who might have put them on. Didn’t really matter, as long as it wasn’t Balazar and his horrible cough.

  At last Balazar could speak. “Yes…” he rasped in a hoarse voice. “Poison. The witch…spoke true. She…had the antidote. Little harm…done. To you.”

  She sat up slowly, wincing at the stabbing protest from her core muscles. She half expected Balazar to recommend that she lie back down, but he did not.

  “What happened?” she asked. “To the others?”

  “Fifteen…missing. Assumed dead. Severard…dead. Chthgothka in…critical condition. Ruth…unharmed. Not the…worst outcome, considering.”

  “Considering?”

  “Glaurung and…Abraham Black.”

  “Okay.” She swung herself gingerly around so her legs dangled off the edge of the bed. Her bare feet just barely failed to touch the floor. “Coat, Bahamut.” It was chilly here. Was she in some kind of hospital? Or rather, the medical wing of the prison? If so, it was terrible.

  Bahamut appeared with a coat. It was not the same one she’d had before. It was heavier, a thick soft fabric on the inside and thin metal plates all over the outside. An armored coat. It rattled when it moved. She slid it on, appreciating the weight of it. It made her feel secure, and it immediately warmed her. Bahamut also brought her headband, which Heidi automatically fastened. That was better. Now…

  “Phone?” A flash of blackness, and Bamahut was there with her phone in his mouth. She took it and checked the time by reflex before remembering how useless that was here. She had a lot of messages. That ‘Banana Quest’ had convened…they had all met up and gone to Skywater without her. They had been worried about her. How long had she been out?

  Besides this, she had separate messages from each of them. Eric, telling her nonchalantly that he’d be right on over if she just said the word. Isaac, wanting to know about her moon, asking without actually asking whether she was okay. Jimothy asking explicitly, earnestly, whether he could help her somehow. Elizabeth expressing encouragement, confident that Heidi could take care of things by herself. Kaitlyn sent only a picture: the five of them against some kind of blurry watercolor background, all of them soaking wet. Ah, it had been taken in the rain. But what were those colors?

  Heidi scrolled up from that picture and found a conversation with Kate that she was sure had never taken place. It took her a moment to realize what must have happened, who must have used Heidi’s phone in an attempt to glean information about her from her concerned and worried friends.

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  Heidi gritted her teeth, suddenly angry. Possibly more angry than she had ever been. So angry that it hurt, not just emotionally but physically as her body tensed up, making muscles scream. Vyrix had used Kaitlyn, trying to find Heidi’s weaknesses.

  “Bahamut!” she said. “Boots. Socks.” It was never a good idea to walk around on the Metal Moon without titanium-plated boots. Bahamut appeared in the shadows and laid the requested items at her feet. Heidi tried to bend down to pick them up. “Um…” she said after a moment. “Can you…?”

  Bahamut slid on her socks, followed by her boots. He even understood how to strap them snug. Heidi spoke to the patiently waiting Balazar while her angel outfitted her feet. “Vyrix,” she said, “and her companion Cazzie. Where are they?”

  “Imprisoned, as…you requested. Though hardly…necessary. All…”

  “All are prisoners here, I remember.” That was his favorite line.

  Her boots on, the armored coat weighing her down comfortably, she found that her recent injuries had not significantly impaired her ability to walk. She wouldn’t be sprinting for a couple of days, though. She discovered new bruises on her legs and her face. Of course. Vyrix had struck her with that cane. Her left cheek and jaw were swollen, sore.

  She followed Balazar through an unfamiliar wing of the dark, cold, metallic architectural monstrosity that was her prison facility or something. No one had yet fully explained exactly who were the prisoners, or why, or what her job as Warden exactly was beyond repelling the Darkworlders. No one seemed to know any of these things. Or care.

  Yet some answers came when she saw Vyrix and Cazzie. They were in separate but adjacent cells, though ‘cell’ was a strong word for an iron box set into the wall like an alcove, the entire front of which was open and unbarred. Heidi could have walked up and touched either of them, and likewise they could have simply strolled out had they been able to. They were not able, of course, and the reason was that they were both wrapped in bale thorns. The spiky protrusions, some of them longer than Heidi’s hand, glowed pink and purple in the darkness, pulsing steadily with light. They were razor sharp. A cut from one would send her away into the regrets of the victim. The loss, the sorrow, the despair.

  “But they’re alive,” she whispered, unable to keep an edge of horror from her voice. Bale thorns were supposed to grow on corpses. Vyrix, her grotesquely deformed body barely visible under her rags, twitched slightly. Cazzie, a shapeless feathery mass, heaved with slow, irregular breathing. Cazzie’s eyes lay scattered around her and they were moving, the pupils dilated, darting back and forth, unseeing.

  “All…” said Balazar in response, “are prisoners…here.” He wheezed and choked.

  A glimmer of understanding flickered in the back of Heidi’s mind. Prisoners to regrets? And a question: was she, the Warden, also a prisoner herself?

  She stepped toward Vyrix. Her anger at this creature had drained away, leaving a sour mixture of disgust and pity. What, she wondered, did Vyrix regret?

  Heidi raised a hand before her eyes and looked at it. She could prick a finger. Just a tiny jab of pain, and then she would know. She would know the darkest secrets of this self-proclaimed cursed witch. Was it ethical? She found she didn’t give a damn. But did she really want to?

  No, she decided at last. She didn’t want to know. Not now. Because she wouldn’t just know . She would be Vyrix, would feel everything. She couldn’t bear the thought.

  A rustle in the darkness behind, a clittering, chittering sound, and Ruth was there. As usual, Heidi had to suppress a primal urge to shiver at the sight of him.

  “Thank you,” he said at once, “for saving my life.” He bowed low, which was a strange sight given his anatomy.

  “And…thank you,” she replied. “For the same thing. I want to check on…uh…”

  “Chgathshk,” said Ruth. His eerie voice chewed up the word into something even more of a sound effect than usual. “Yes. But first, I bear gifts. For you. Here.” He extended a pincer toward her. It gripped a small metal canister. It warmed her hands when she took it, and liquid sloshed within. “Drink,” said Ruth. “For the pain.”

  Heidi unscrewed the lid, sniffed the contents. Strange. Sour. It did not smell bad, but she had just been poisoned by drinking something offered to her here on the Metal Moon. She glanced at Vyrix, then at Ruth. She drained the contents of the canister in three gulps.

  “And this,” Ruth continued. “A gift for the Warden.” He held out his pincers, and something sprang into being between them. It was an oblong sheet of grey metal, six feet long. It floated in the air, and Heidi recognized it as the thing they had found in the wreck. Noqual, or something. And here it was, fashioned into something almost exactly like a surfboard.

  Ruth showed her how to make it shrink to the size of a popsicle stick. Some kind of magic at work; Heidi didn’t care for the details. Unfortunately, Ruth could not accompany her further because he had business elsewhere at the moment.

  “I must entreat the gods on behalf of my wife,” he explained.

  “Y…” Heidi would have shouted your what? had she not been so stunned.

  “Dead nearly three hundred bright. Excuse me.” He turned and skittered into the darkness. Then Heidi followed Balazar to check on the gorilla, leaving the prisoners in their doorless cells.