The 21st of December was the winter solstice, first day of winter, and the holiday season is in full swing across much of the world. It’s been a busy couple of months for me, with lots of family events, from deaths of those close to me, to getting married to Andrea - my partner of eight years.
But, with all the good and the sad, life goes on and I’m looking forward to what’s to come. I’ve been designing my new website, redesigning my live-stream, and dropping a few edits on book covers, and so on.
I’d love to list all my New Year’s resolutions, but I don’t have any. I do have goals set for 2022, and have already begun working towards them. Some of them are personal goals (like weight loss), or fun goals (ramping up my blues harmonica skills), but most are writing related.
In 2022, I’m planning on writing and publishing Portals, book 4 - 6, and then work on Silver & Smith Chronicles, book 3 -6. I’m hoping to get them all into audiobook format also. I do have a plan beyond those, but no need to overwhelm myself.
I’m already 1/3 of the way into the writing of Portals, Book 4 - Satyrs & Sigils. I’m having a great time at it, and writing about 2,000 words most nights after I get home from my day job. I need to start considering the cover for it, and begin that process. That way, I’m ready to work on it when I send this to my editor!
I’ve also been trimming the fat. I’ve deleted my Twitter, Pinterest, Patreon, Ko-Fi, and two Facebook pages. There was so little activity on those, all they did was create extra work with no results. So, I cut back on how many different places my energy and attention are going.
Hopefully, with all the things I’m doing now, as well as the things I’ve let go of, it’ll create a situation where I can grow into writing full time and be able to step away from my day job.
Time will tell, but as always, I’m optimistic.
I am curious though, which series do you prefer… Portals or Silver & Smith? If you haven’t read both of them, I will include the first three chapters of each in this newsletter. Then, you can let me know!
All my best,
Portals: Book One - Beliefs & Black Magics
Chapter 1
Torrence fell to his knees in the snow, vomiting onto a spill of his own blood. One arm wrapped across his midsection, and the other was on the pommel of his massive two-handed blade. He supported his weight with the hand on the weapon, stopping himself from falling face first into the muck and mess between his legs.
Covered in gore, chunks of flesh and sinew decorated the blade, and a third of the sword lay embedded in the icy loam of the ground.
Around the weapon lay a half dozen bodies of gnarled men with hyena-like heads. The bodies were hacked and torn, heads crushed, and limbs twisted. More bloody weapons laid around them—broken, rusted, and chipped.
“That’ll give you tetanus,” Torrence said to no one, “I wouldn’t want to get cut by one of those.”
But one of those had cut him.
His mind deposited the information into his thoughts, like suddenly remembering where he’d put his keys, or that he had a doctor’s appointment on Tuesday. Which he didn’t. He’d been driving home from one when he hit the patch of ice.
“That’s right,” Torrence spoke again, his white fur cloak whipping around him and the wind picking up on the frozen shelf of the mountainside, “I was driving home.”
Torrence pushed to his feet, using the sword to leverage himself up. Without thinking about it, he bent and wiped the blade along the still warm corpse of the creature—gnohl, his memory supplied—that he’d killed moments before. The body steamed in the air of the frozen north, and Torrence looked out across the countryside.
He was in the easternmost portion of Ri Steppe, on the western edge of the Frozen Desert. Looking to the south, he could see the Black Wood, a haunted forest contaminated by mages and wizards and sorcerers who’d once occupied the Nine Towers of Magic on its southeastern border.
“What the hell does all that mean?” Torrence asked, his memories gently blanketing him with the information.
It was like remembering a birthday party from your childhood that you didn’t even know you’d forgotten. You knew it to be true, but it just hadn’t been in your head at all before it was in your head. It wasn’t a lost memory that makes you gasp when it showed up again. It was one of those that made you throw up your hand and exclaim, ‘Oh yeah!’ as you smiled.
The view in front of him, as well as the scene of carnage at his feet, conflicted with the last memory he had of what he’d been doing before thirty seconds ago.
His arm was still across his midsection, covering the vicious wound where a gnohl had almost disemboweled him. A dozen of the creatures had been in on the attack.
They’d dropped stones from above as he trudged through the knee-deep snow. The rocks had fallen around him, and he’d reacted out of instinct, bounding one way and bouncing another to avoid being hit by the makeshift avalanche.
He remembered thinking it was a pemtie idea (pemtie; the word broke his train of thought; he knew it through his body, not his own mind, as stupid or ignorant), and that their quarry—which was him—had a chance of being knocked off the side of the mountain and plummeting far down into the valley below, thus removing the chance for his attackers to loot, or eat, their target.
Then they’d attacked, swarming from hiding places, a half dozen with swords or wicked, twisted daggers. They’d charged him; one being taken out by the final melon-sized stone thrown from above.
The creature had fallen—issuing a brief scream that ended when its head was crushed at the first contact with the mountain side—and then plummeted into the mists below. Torrence had thought nothing else of that one, because it was so far down that even the sound of the body crunching as it hit the ground was lost in the fall’s distance.
The others had come towards him, jabbing with their blades, but keeping a distance between them and him. He figured out why as soon as the arrows began coming down from above.
He’d charged the closest attacker—which his current thoughts wanted to call a monster—and used it as a shield. The creature had taken three arrows to the chest before it went limp and lifeless. Torrence had discarded it over the side of the mountain.
As this scene replayed in Torrence’s head, he struggled with it because he also had a very different set of experiences in his recent memory.
He had gone to the doctor’s, driving himself using the newly installed hand controls in the minivan. It had been nerve-racking, and his thoughts had kept going back to the fateful day where he had lost his ability to stand and walk, his father, and so much all in one car accident. An accident that people told him was no one’s fault, just a patch of ice, and that he shouldn’t feel guilty about what happened. These things happen, they said.
The chuz they did.
There was another word that had changed, chuz, when he had meant chuz. No, not chuz, chuz. His brain kept translating the loose meaning of his swear words to what his body knew.
His thoughts went back to where they’d been, the difference between the two words fading like a light breeze, unnoticed.
Torrence had been sixteen, and a junior in high school. He was doing well in track and field, football, and soccer, as well as being the favorite of many of the girls. He had only had his real license, as opposed to his learner’s permit, for three months when it happened.
A patch of ice, loss of control, a tumbling sensation that included a sharp snapping sound from behind him, and he never heard his father’s voice again after those last shouts of panic. He also never walked again.
That meant no more sports, no more girls, no more success, no more friends. He’d been broken, inside and out, completely destroyed.
He’d finished school, mostly at home, through new online courses that were offered in ‘extenuating” circumstances.
But today, he’d fought those memories. He’d turned the app on his phone up, blasting music into the small minivan, donated and converted for his use. He sang along, driving and gripping the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip, and made it safely to his physical therapy appointment.
Though he’d never walk and would be restricted to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, the doctor assured him he was doing well. It was a forty-five-minute drive, a thirty-minute wait; all for four minutes with a nurse checking his vitals, and then three minutes with a doctor that barely looked up from his notes.
The memory jumped, blending with the anger and bitterness of what he was given, what was done to him.
Shunting the thoughts away, he focused on the now, on the present, as he was taught to do when talking to his therapist.
The world lurched. It wasn’t his world. He was on a mountainside, high above a forest in one direction and plains in another.
This wasn’t right.
Where was his car? He had hit the ice, and then he was here.
He stared into the distance, his mind going blank, becoming overwhelmed. The treetops of the forest to the south were still mostly green, but just beginning to get golden, orange, and rust highlights as autumn set in. The snows in the mountains were descending, and in a month or two, it would cover the lands.
Torrence’s body took over.
He looked down, moving his arm from the wound he’d received a few minutes ago that ran across his abdomen. It was a bright pink puckered scar now, like he’d visited a healer that wasn’t an elder or adept, but instead was just an acolyte that did their best. He shrugged and smiled. At least he wasn’t dead.
He lifted his sword, checked to make sure it was clean, swung it overhead with his right hand, caught the tip with his left, and guided it to the leather scabbard on his back. It slid into place effortlessly.
Looking down, he knelt beside the dead creatures and began scavenging whatever he thought would be useful. Rummaging through the gnohls’ pouches, he pulled various items out, looked at them and either tucked them into his own pouches, or his knapsack, or tossed them to the side.
He stowed a piece of charcoal, a silver thimble, a bone carving of a bear, and a few other items. Most things were discarded, including stale chunks of bread and crumbly, moldy cheese, rust-pocked knives, and various and sundry odds and ends. The few coins, silver peks and copper fleks, were kept. He held one deep blue gemstone up to the setting sun before dropping into the same pouch as the coins.
The waning day made him pause. He had to move. He’d been seeking shelter—and keeping an eye out for game that he could use for a meal—when he was attacked. He’d hoped to make the foothills of the mountain before it got too late. He’d seen the glint of sunlight off a stream and had been heading for that, knowing that local fauna would come to it to drink.
Reaching over to a cooling form of a gnohl, he jerked the primitive bow from its massive paw, and wrangled the quiver with a dozen and half rough arrows in it from the creature’s back.
Standing, Torrence moved forward. Loping down the path in long strides, letting gravity help him along so he didn’t have to put in as much effort, he quickly descended.
He knew he wouldn’t reach the bottom before dark, but maybe he could get lucky and hunt on the run.
Torrence’s mind picked back up, but cautiously and delicately, not wanting to interrupt the automatic actions of what seemed to be his body now.
He raised his hands, and looked at them—still leaping from the path, to the side of a hillock, to a raised knoll, bounding downward towards his destination in the distance—and saw they were different from his normal mocha-colored skin. These were a brown, but with a tinge of red mixed in. Torrence could feel his long, silky hair bouncing in its braid on his shoulders, instead of his usual tight knit curls.
He was taller than before, and wider, and the weight of it felt different. He thought about that for a moment and suddenly he was in full control of this body.
His feet stumbled under the unfamiliar balance of muscle and height, and he tripped. He went down hard, turning to one side, landing on his shoulder, and sliding two meters in a rain of gravel and sand.
Mentally, Torrence pulled his non-existent hands back from the controls.
The body stood without his help, and he heard a deep, throaty laugh come from it. The head dipped down, the hands sweeping across taut muscles, looking for injury. The knapsack shifted on his back, atop the cloak and sword, and his belt showed his two pouches still attached. The heavy grey woolen shirt had torn, but the woolen pants and leather boots were still in reasonable condition.
He moved forward again, with that easy mountain goat gait, and assured agility that came without thought.
Torrence realized he was in a body. Now, that seemed like an obvious conclusion, but it was more than that. He was in a different body, a body that had an instinctual set of skills. This body took over when he wasn’t specifically trying to do anything, and a simple idea of what he wanted to accomplish was suggested, rather than pushed or forced.
He wasn’t himself, in a very literal way. He was someone else. Someone who was huge, muscled, and fit. Maybe this was what his body would have been like if he hadn’t been in the car accident?
Torrence searched for a mind, any thought that wasn’t his own.
He found nothing.
Where was he?
Northeastern Teurone, memories answered, east of the Wandering Hills and Mountains, south of the Ri Steppes, west of the Frozen Desert, and north of the Black Wood.
Torrence fainted in his new head, but the body kept going.
Chapter 2
The Kid picked himself up from the dust of the alley and spun to face his pursuers. His legs should have been broken from the four-story jump he’d made, and he knew he’d blacked out, at least for a moment.
He was a new man, though, and only seconds had passed since he’d jumped. It was like a dream as this new consciousness settled over him, like a new skin over his seventeen-year-old frame.
The bones of his calves knit back together, a surge of otherworldly energy filling his body. With a rush of mixed emotions—from disbelief to wonder, bitterness to hope, and acceptance of the inevitable of the elderly to the endless possibilities of youth—the Kid rose up and smiled.
He, and she, didn’t have to die today.
This was the delight of a dream that doesn’t feel like a dream, but instead is real. It was the moment most people always vaguely wish for, but never really expect to happen. It was that hope of winning the lottery, getting your dream promotion handed to you, or that other person saying yes to a life and future by your side.
But it was encapsulated by the Kid standing up in an alley.
Fifteen deadly assassins were after him. Rappelling down the sides of the buildings on the thin silk cords of their professions, or just dropping down from windowsill to windowsill until they reached the ground. But that didn’t matter anymore. The Kid smiled, and let out a whoop that even a blind adversary could track him with.
“Talley ho, the game is afoot, Watson!” he shouted.
The Kid ran, joy in every stride, and the thrill of being alive in every action. Laughter, delight, and pure, unadulterated happiness flooded through everything the Kid did.
“Run, run, run as fast as you can,” the Kid shouted, “you’ll never catch me, I’m the gingerbread man. I ran from the baker and his wife, too. You’ll never catch me, not any of you.”
He laughed, turning the corner into the main marketplace of Durgan’s Keep, skidding around a fruit cart and into the flow of foot traffic of the evening shopping crowd.
Fifteen men and women poured into the street after the Kid. They barreled into merchants and knocked over shoppers, knives gleaming as they ran after the lithe youth.
People dove out of the way, and shrill whistles of the city watch rose in the distance.
The Kid reached a city square, a three-meter-across well on a raised dais in the center, and turned to face his foes. Twin daggers appeared in his hands without him even thinking about it.
The assassins ran into the area, spreading out to cover any escape the Kid may consider. The primary streets, set at the compass points, had two people in front of each of them, and the alleys, at the secondary compass points, had one each.
“This is another fine mess I’ve gotten myself into, Stanley,” the Kid said, laughing, and let his twin blades fly.
One assassin stumbled backwards, clutching at his bloody throat. Another fell forward, a blade protruding from her chest.
The Kid laughed again and leapt from the well into the thinning crowd towards his fallen foes.
Smiling into their fading eyes, the Kid snatched his and their weapons up, crouched and slicing their money pouches free, and dropped them into his own.
The city watch pushed into the building-made valley, cutting their way through the assassins at the edges of the square, allowing the responsible citizens a getaway route. A dozen guards replaced the assassins.
The remaining score of people that weren’t involved escaped through the openings made by the patrol, and the guards—stout, tall, and broad-shouldered—formed a human barrier between the Kid and the ways out.
The Kid remembered tales, not from his own memory, but from the memory of the body he now inhabited, tales of the days before the Talisman—the comet that had dominated the sky for so long, raining down its mystical emanations and increasing the power of necromancers and summoners everywhere—of when Durgan’s Keep wasn’t a refuge for people attempting to get away from the demons to the southeast, or the constant trickling influx of undead from the west.
Once upon a time, Durgan’s Keep was home to adventurers and merchants alike. Founded by an intrepid rokairn, Durgan, he laid out plans and sectioned off an area of wilderness to create a balanced trade town that grew into a fortified capital of the eastern part of the continent. His aeifain and other companions each put in their thoughts about what their own race would like in a section of town, and after twenty years of construction, Durgan’s Keep was born.
The demon invasion of almost a hundred years ago—long before the Talisman—as maniacal beings from other dimensions flooded out of Land’s End to the southeast, was the herald of change. It had started a series of events that included the now infamous necromancer, Rondarius the Foul, escaping from his multiple-century-long imprisonment.
Then, when the Talisman stopped in the sky and stayed, hanging over the land for decades, everything went to shit.
The Kid hadn’t been around for that, in either form.
That thought made the person at the core of the Kid pause and consider. But then the rush of the guards and assassins allowed the Kid to stop thinking and throw himself into action.
He ran forward and leapt into the air. His feet caught nothing, but he continued to rise. The guards beneath his boots, bent suddenly as if they had been trampled over, though the Kid’s boots were almost a meter above their heads.
The Kid flipped, spinning heels over head through the air and catching onto the walnut windowsill of a third-story apartment.
The surrounding architecture reminded the person inside the Kid of the Tudor era of their own world. Dark wood boxing in and slashing across walls, beige plasterwork was the dominant style. A fair amount of stonework balanced it, showing the craftsmanship of the rokairn builders of Durgan’s Keep.
Pulling himself up, the Kid saw a woman’s face with her mouth in a moue of surprise staring out the window at him. With a wave of his hand, he drew on the energy of his mind and touched hers.
“Hocus Pocus, baby,” the Kid let out a cat-like yowl, and changed.
The woman now saw a cat, struggling outside her window, trying to pull itself up and angry people below pointed at it with raised crossbows and readied throwing blades.
The woman reached forward and shoved the window open, before scrambling backwards to avoid the flurry of daggers that struck the window frame outside and the bolts that hit the ceiling within.
She saw the cat leap inside, yowling, as the Kid ran past her, shouting a thank you to the woman.
He ran through her sitting room, threw open the door to the hall, and stopped to listen. Angry voices came up from below, and the sound of booted feet on the stairs echoed hollowly.
The Kid ran up the last flight of stairs. A square opening showed the sky outside of the stairwell. He clambered out of the window frame at the top of the stairs. His fingers grabbed unseen holds, and he pulled himself up the outside of the building. Looking down into the alley ten meters below, the Kid saw a tall, thin assassin with carrot orange hair leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, watching him climb with a dull disinterest.
It was Mezk the Damned. Well known for his pact with demons, people whispered he’d agreed to let them have his soul when he died, but he would never die of violence or injury.
How could I know this about someone I’ve never seen? The Kid thought, and his grip on the wall slipped, and he fell.
He caught himself on the window he’d climbed out of, and pulled himself upward, focusing on what he was doing, his heart pounding, rather than random thoughts about what he should and shouldn’t know.
Once he gained the rooftop, he was on his way to escape. Using his magics, he pushed himself with each leap, allowing him to jump spaces two or three times wider than a normal thief could jump. With a nod and a wave, people forgot he’d just passed their window, or just didn’t see him at all.
Life was grand.
Or at least it was until he settled on top of the peaked roof of a Church of Jonath. Sitting with his back to the warm chimney, his legs bent, and his butt resting on the slate shingles of the stout building, the Kid wondered about his death.
“Jonath’s trident,” he swore, using a phrase from the memory of his body.
He knew he’d died. He’d fallen four stories off a roof, landed on his feet, and broke both legs. Falling backwards, he’d caved in the back of his head in the cobblestone alley. But here he was, alive and well, but not the same as he was before.
He also knew that his other body, in a different world, laying in a bed, dying of stage four cancer.
He knew he had all his skills, all his knowledge, and even his memories for the most part, but he also had more. He had a second set of skills, knowledge, and memories.
These other memories were foreign, but at the same time felt more real than the roof on which he sat. They held decades of life; including a husband who’d left her; a son who died in a coma of liver failure because of alcohol poisoning when he was just a month from graduating college with a doctorate; and a plethora of skills, ranging from cooking fried foods to knitting to how to write a resume in Microsoft Word.
The Kid remembered he was once been called Jen, but that was a world away, even a lifetime away. None of that mattered anymore. He was here, and he was loving life.
No more, he thought, pushing any other memories to the side. He was the Kid now, and belonged here. This was his body now, and this was his world. And he would live life to the fullest this time. No more worrying about what was right or proper, or what the boss thought of her dress, or if that man in the street wanted to hurt her for the couple of dollars in her purse.
She would miss Cuddles, her Pomeranian, but the nurses would see to the dog.
He would, the Kid chided himself. He would. He would no longer be she who was, instead he would be him.
The strange thought swirled and bumped around the Kid’s head. With a chuckle and shrug, he brushed the thought aside.
Standing up, he looked across the rooftops, watching twilight settle in. The low hanging cloud of smoke from wood fires cooking dinner and warming houses in the late evening filled the sky just thirty meters above the city.
He had been on a job, but it had been lost in translation.
“Que sera, sera,” the Kid chuckled again, “whatever will be, will be, the future’s not ours to see.”
With a quick twirl, the Kid straightened up and ran for the edge of the rooftop, threw himself off, grabbed a canvas awning below to pull himself to it, bounced off it, and flipped to the street below.
Why didn’t he ever think of doing things like that before tonight, he wondered as he sauntered up the street, happily whistling.
Chapter 3
Esperanza staggered backwards, away from the crowd of strangers, reaching for her adoringly. They were all talking at once, some weeping, some screaming, and others just whispering. But all seemed grateful to her, and the words ‘miracle worker’ were being repeated over and over.
The dark-haired woman tripped over the hem of her long robe, her hands flying up as she fell backwards. She landed hard on her butt.
Holding her hands out in front of her, her sleeves sliding up her arms and pooling in the crook of her elbows, she stared at the blotches of grey and brown fading from her skin. Swollen and puffy flesh shrunk as she watched, veins receded to normal sizes, and capillaries healed as bruises disappeared under her gaze.
A second set of impulses, almost thoughts, flooded her mind, pushing the fear and surprise aside. They told her of the power of Latress, goddess of wind, weather, and wisdom. Mother of the twin gods, Torr and Tarra, and wife of the god of justice and earth, Jonath.
The thoughts told her of the favor of the goddess, and how it had blessed her and would shelter and protect her, and how it had guided her in healing the hundreds of sick people in this village, saving them and their children from being wiped out by the plague.
Esperanza shoved the thoughts away, pushed at that other identity, and screamed, tearing at her own hair, pulling a fistful out with each hand.
The crowd stopped. They stared at her uncertainly, not sure what to do.
One middle-aged woman stepped forward, holding out a hand, and said something in a language that Esperanza thought she should comprehend. But it wasn’t English or Spanish, and though she felt she knew it, her mind blocked out any understanding because it was impossible.
The woman approached like most people approached a scared and wounded animal; cautious, slowly, speaking gently, and making comforting noises between words.
The woman came close enough to touch Esperanza and knelt as she took the younger woman’s hands into her own.
Esperanza fainted.
Esperanza woke in a small room. She put a hand above her head, and it bumped a wall before she could even extend her arm all the way. She could see the wall at the foot of the bed by the faint light from the dim fire in the ceramic chiminea that stood beside the door, to her left and barely more than an arm’s length away. Smoke curled from the top of it, drawn out of a hole in the mud wall. Directly across from the door was the only window in the room. Woven reeds of twisted branches created a shutter placed over the opening, then covered with a thicker blanket to keep the chill outside, and the heat inside.
Esperanza ran her fingers along the wall beside the bed, on her right. Under her hands, she could feel fibrous plants mixed into the clay to help give the wall strength. The whole place smelled faintly of must and dung, the latter from the dried horse manure that burned in the chiminea.
Rolling onto her left side on the burlap mattress filled with reeds, Esperanza saw her few possessions on a table of woven branches. It held the holy symbol of Latress, a gusting cloud with seven stars around it. Subtle etching seemed to show a face within the cloud. Beside it was her herb pouch on its thin leather belt, her neatly folded robe, a few hair combs, and a small mortar and pestle.
And a small knife in a sheath.
She picked up the blade and drew it from the holder. She stared at it.
She had been ending her life, and now she was here. This knife held her eyes as it moved along her forearm and wrist, as if of its own volition. It scratched her skin, leaving a white line in the flesh.
“Latress’s Breath protect me,” she muttered, wondering at the words she uttered.
That wasn’t her God, but it felt like it was the one watching over her right now.
A rough curtain hung in the doorway and the smell of something cooking drifted from the other room. A woman’s voice sang a gentle lullaby, more humming than singing, and the sound of wooden bowls and utensils clunked against each other.
The sounds stopped when Esperanza sat up, the bed creaking and rustling underneath her.
“Hello?” the woman’s voice said from the other side of the curtain.
Esperanza could see a form through the opening between the wall and the hanging barrier. It looked up and to one side, giving her guest the courtesy of privacy.
“No,” Esperanza muttered.
“Oh, you’re awake,” the woman pushed through the curtain and smiled down at her guest, “maybe you’d like to freshen up?”
The woman had a coarse clay pitcher and large bowl in her hands, and she set them on the small table beside the bed. She pulled a rough cloth, tucked into her apron strings, out and set it beside the other things.
“There’s a chamber pot and scrapers under the table,” the woman smiled down at her, “and just come on out when you’re done.”
Esperanza came out ten minutes later, looking traumatized.
The room she stepped into wasn’t much bigger than the bedroom, and only had one door that presumably led to the outside.
The woman looked up from her squatting position in front of a fireplace. She was stirring some sort of stew in a ceramic pot that sat directly on the hot coals of the fire.
The rest of the room was plain. A table with two chairs sat on one side of the fire, and a low wooden bench covered with blankets was on the other side. Esperanza guessed this served as a couch, but also the woman’s bed, while Esperanza was her guest.
Directly across from the small knee-high hearth, which was a brick and mud affair, was what Esperanza guessed was the kitchen. It wasn’t more than a few shelves set into the mud walls with supplies neatly lining them.
“Everything come out okay?” her hostess asked, smiling and showing a mouth with missing, broken, and brown teeth.
Esperanza just stared at her as if she hadn’t understood the words coming out of the woman’s mouth.
“Well,” the woman stood, “I’m guessing it did, otherwise you wouldn’t be out here. I’m Rose, by the way. I thought you may have remembered it, but considering everything you’ve just gone through, it must have addled you.”
Rose moved to get wooden bowls from the kitchen area, and Esperanza looked at the woman.
Rose was younger than Esperanza originally thought, at least twenty years younger, and probably in her mid-thirties, which would make the woman less than ten years older than herself. Rose must’ve had a hard life, and was slightly bent as she moved about the house, her grey streaked hair in a tight bun on her head held by a blue ribbon, and her knuckles swollen and red from hard work.
The decor in the house was somewhere between simple and nonexistent. Curtains of faded yellow hung over the one shuttered window, and a painted urn with a large chip from it stood on the table to hold drinking water. Wreaths and braids of dry herbs hung from the ceiling.
Rose squatted next to the hearth to spoon out some stew into two shallow bowls. She stood, groaning, and brought the bowls to the table and set them down. Taking two ceramic cups from the shelf, she set them on the table also, and filled the vessels with cloudy water from the painted urn.
“Sorry, we don’t have no beer,” Rose smiled sheepishly, showing her broken teeth, “or any meat with all the animals dying. Hard to make these things when so many in the village were too sick to work, or died from the plague. But that’ll all be changing now that you’ve fixed things.”
Esperanza thought that the woman would be pretty if she wasn’t raised in a third-world country. Then she wondered how she’d gotten to this place, and why everyone spoke English here.
But it wasn’t English, nagged some logic in the back of her head. She could understand Rose, and all the other villagers earlier, with no issue. But it wasn’t any language that she knew, except her brain did know it. Like a reflex, it just caught the words, and she knew the meaning with absolute clarity.
“Come on, then,” Rose waved at her, then gestured to the second chair, “you gotta eat, right? Even a priestess needs to eat, at least as far as I know.”
Esperanza moved to the chair, pulled it out, and sat. It was a high ladder-back wooden chair with a woven straw seat, and surprisingly comfortable.
Rose unwrapped a loaf of dark bread, tore a hunk from it, and set it on the table in front of Esperanza’s bowl. She repeated the process for herself before wrapping the bread back up and setting it aside.
The bowls were small, and the hunk of bread was about as large as your average dinner roll. Looking around, Esperanza realized that this was everything they had to eat, and it was probably more than most of the villagers had on their tables tonight.
That was when Esperanza realized she hadn’t seen anyone who was overweight here. She’d seen people who were sickly thin, perhaps because of the illness the village had suffered, or perhaps because of the food shortage Rose mentioned. It could’ve been a combination of the two.
“Latress’s rains bless this food,” the words came out unbidden by her conscious thoughts, “and nourish us…”
Esperanza stopped, looking up at her hostess, who was smiling, then looked back down.
Esperanza picked up her wooden spoon, dipped it into the dark brown broth in the bowl, fished out a chunk of potato, and raised to her mouth. Sniffing without realizing she was doing it; she smelled the pungent aroma of peat moss. That was the musty smell from earlier also, she realized.
With the tip of her tongue, she tasted the stew, if you wanted to call it that. It was bland and thin, but had a faint meaty flavor of mushrooms.
Rose was watching her expectantly, smiling supportively as she ate. When the woman saw Esperanza looking back at her, Rose raised her spoon in a toast and then slurped her broth from it. Esperanza looked at the woman’s shallow bowl and saw that there were no potatoes in it.
Esperanza remembered her grandmother, the woman who had raised her. The woman had only spoken Spanish, but found a way to get a job and keep food on the table, clothes on Esperanza’s back, and the water and power on. And she always made sure that Esperanza had a nice dress, new shoes, and the portion of dinner that had meat.
When Esperanza questioned her grandmother why she never had any meat, her grandmother explained that it was too hard for her to chew, and she didn’t want any. When Esperanza was older, years after her grandmother had died, she’d realized the truth. The woman always made sure her granddaughter had the best that she could give her, even if it meant that her grandmother went without.
Rose, sipping at her broth and watching Esperanza with her potato-laden spoon, suddenly reminded Esperanza of her grandmother.
Esperanza smiled, put the potato in her mouth with the wash of broth, chewed, made appreciative noises, and nodded at Rose.
Within minutes, the two had finished the meal. Esperanza wanted a glass of water to rinse the dirt from her teeth—the water from the urn was clouded with it—but she only showed appreciation.
Rose chatted as she cleaned up, telling her guest how everyone was doing everything she’d taught them, even boiling water before drinking it, washing things twice, and cleaning their hands before eating or sleeping.
Considering the hanging herbs, and things Rose said about teaching the villagers specific things, Esperanza had concluded that Rose must be something like the village’s wise woman. And the woman did seem to care about everyone’s well-being.
Something thudded against the shutter from outside, and the smell of smoldering flame rose. Through the cracks in the shutters and the front door, they could see dancing orange light. Shouts began filling the night, and within seconds screams followed them.
Rose rushed to the door and pulled it open. Over her shoulder, Esperanza could see the slow, shambling forms of the walking dead.
“Give us the damned witch,” a deep voice boomed, “or I promise each and every man, woman, and child in this village will join my rotting army.”
Rose looked back at Esperanza over her shoulder.
“Bring out the priestess of Latress or everyone dies,” the man’s voice shouted, louder and closer this time, “and then will be brought back from the dead to serve me for eternity.”
Silver & Smith and the Jazeer’s Light
Book 1 of the Silver & Smith Chronicles
Chapter 1
Silver’s vision swam. He pushed himself to go on, deeper into the two-thousand-year-old tomb. A dragon’s egg awaited.
The LED light flickered in his hands and Silver licked his lips, sweat beading on his forehead. The metallic taste in his mouth and the slight loss of equilibrium passed; he attributed it to the depth underground and the many corroded bronze and copper pipes, statues, and artifacts surrounding him in the tomb.
Silver was tall with a runner’s build, and his dark skin and dark clothes blended with the shadows. Only the silver accents of various buckles, snaps, and clips stood out. Even his various weapons were jet black in color. He wiped his sweaty palms on his black shirt and then on the thighs of his black pants.
“What was that?” asked Pepper from beside him, smacking his lips and rubbing his temple.
Garry Pepper was thirty centimeters shorter than Silver, but spoke with the bravado of a much larger man. He swaggered as he walked, wiping dust from his shaved head. His outfit was simple, but military in style.
“Shh, Garry,” Silver’s voice was low and he hunched to duck under the overhead pipes, “we need to listen, not talk. These tombs are dangerous, and any sound could warn us of a trap being sprung.”
“I’ve been a Commander in the SIS for a decade,” Garry said, walking under the obstruction without ducking, “and in the organization since the restructure in 2020 after the Brexit fiasco, and never seen a terracotta army, dodged traps set a couple thousand years ago, or found myself dizzy around a bald guy before.”
“Garry, we’re both bald,” Silver leaned his shoulder against a corner and peeked around it, “now, be quiet before someone hears us.”
“Mate, no one is following us and nothing living has been down here in a couple millennia. I think we’re going to be ok,” Garry snorted and leaned on the opposite wall as he looked Silver over. “Unless your super-bright flashlight reflecting off my pale skin attracts some mystical beast from eons past. That’s what you say happened the last time, right Silver?”
“That wasn’t in this place, and one’s different. That was in the catacombs where I found the coded tile sequence that I’ll need to open the egg’s hidden compartment in the throne room ahead,” Silver checked his cardphone on his wrist bracer, making sure the air they were breathing hadn’t soured, “and remember, Garry, you insisted on joining me for this, and I still have no idea why.”
“Government regulations and all that,” Garry looked over his companion’s shoulder, “don’t you think the flashlight will give you away to anything in the next room?”
The tall man ignored his British companion and spun around the corner, crouching. Pivoting on his heels, Silver scanned the room for any threats.
Once he made sure the room was clear, he stood. Moving along the wall, he turned the flashlight towards the center of the room.
A dozen columns, six on each side of the room, rose to a ten-meter height, a layer of dust muting the color of the creamy jade inlay on each of them. The floor-to-ceiling mosaics told the story of how dragons came to this world, and later left, each pillar telling another piece of tale and recounting battles, heroes, and significant events in this piece of history that was now classified as mythology.
Silver wondered if it was actually history. Had things existed in this world that people no longer believed could be possible?
This wasn’t the first time that this idea had crossed his mind. He’d spent weeks tracking information about so many pieces of history and the artifacts associated with them as he haunted the rooftops of Hong Kong, hidden among the steel pipes, whining drones zipping through the air, and the haze of pollution.
Dressed as a gang member—including the conical, Asian coolie hat, a fluttering shoulder capelet, and a chain on the katana-like blade he’d carried—the bounty hunter had followed and watched street level thugs, buying and bullying information. In silk suits he’d followed and watched corporate thugs, buying and bullying information. It amazed him that two worlds, so different, were so alike.
Shaking the thoughts from his head, he focused on the layout of the room.
The columns were a meter thick, creating a path with a tarnished bronze gong the height of a man hanging in front of the closest wall, and an immense throne of marble with emerald and gold inlay at the head of the hall. The gong and the throne were each on their own raised dais.
The musty smell of stagnant water permeated the air, and the sound of a steady dripping broke the silence. Moving forward, the men’s footfalls echoed off the intricately carved ceramic tiles that covered the floor
“Stay towards the walls,” Silver motioned Garry away from the center of the floor, “there’s a better chance of triggering a trap in the middle –like you did in that other room –than against the walls.”
“That was fluke, and you know it. It was the falling rocks that did it, not me.” Garry gestured towards the raised gong, “How about I just stay over here then? That way at least one of us will survive this adventure.”
Creeping along with one hand on the wall, Silver set each foot down with care, pausing to listen for anything that sounded like a trap being triggered.
When he was even with the final pillar in front of the throne, Silver braced one leg against the wall, and faced the center of the room. Pushing off the wall he leapt across the floor, landing on the base of the marble and jade column, hugging it to keep from stepping backwards.
Reorienting himself so he was facing the Emperor’s Dais, he lined up his next jump. Silver bounded across the space to land, catlike, on the steps.
The sound of ancient rusting gears popped, spears thrusting forward from the stone arms of the ruler’s chair. Silver spun to the center for the platform, and jumped onto the throne. Metal spikes sprung upward from the steps as the limber man leapt out of their path and landed on the stone seat.
Silver looked down, fingering the slash in his black graphene sleeve where one of the spears had caught. Blood welled from the wound. The thin armored material could stop the bullets of the rebels in the forest they crossed to get here, but a blade would slice through it as easily as any other cloth.
Silver turned back to his task. He ran his hand across the raised runes on the chair’s left arm, caressing the ancient text with reverence.
He raised his left arm and checked his cardphone, verifying the code he had recovered from the catacombs and pressed tiles on the throne in a matching sequence. Clicks and whirrs issued from under the seat of power. A sigh of air escaped from hidden crevasses and holes in the room.
“The traps are disarmed,” Silver’s deep baritone echoed around the room. “Feel free to move about the cabin.”
“Yep,” Garry’s own voice sounded thin and reedy by comparison to Silver’s. The smaller man moved towards the gong, and inspected it with his flashlight, “got it. Carry on and get the mystical, magical, dragon baby.”
“It’s just an egg,” Silver moved his long, delicate fingers across the right arm of the chair, “and bronze at that. Dragons never existed, at least not on this world.”
“Are you suggesting that they may exist on other planets?” Garry’s voice echoed in the chamber as he ran a hand down the padded mallet that hung beside the bronze circle. He picked it up and held it in both hands.
“It’s a possibility,” Silver pressed a series of buttons resembling mahjong tiles, causing a stone plate to pop up from the arm of the immense chair, “but more likely in other realities.”
“You know that the Hubble Group Array has found more evidence of the possibility of life on other planets,” Garry inspected the Jiaguwen script on the mallet, “than the CERN LHC –you know, that Large Hadron Collider out in Switzerland –has found for other realities, right?”
“For now,” Silver pulled the plate up, revealing a cavity below it, “but who knows what’ll happen in the future?”
“Are you talking about the ILC, the International Linear Collider?” Garry laughed, turning towards Silver, holding the mallet in one hand and shining his flashlight at the mercenary, “that forty-billion-dollar monstrosity hasn’t shown any results since they turned it on two years ago, and has had more issues than the original.”
“They do have a third one in the planning stages,” Silver lifted a large greenish-yellow ovoid from the arm, bringing it to his chest with care, hesitating when it clanked against his harness and the pouches that were attached.
“No one knows what the future holds,” Garry shrugged and turned back towards the gong.
“Some know more than others,” Silver stepped off the seat of the throne and onto the floor. Seeing Garry hefting the mallet, he stopped in his tracks. “What are you doing Garry?”
“Just seeing what this does,” Garry laughed, swinging the mallet at the gong, striking it hard.
“No!” Silver rushed forward, one arm stretched towards Garry who was more than fifty meters away.
The tinny sound reverberated through the room, echoing off the stone walls, floor, and ceiling.
Silver’s cry of dismay was devoured by the sound of cracking stone.
Grinding pulleys and ropes were exposed as the walls crumbed. Holes in the floor appeared, stones landing on it, and the meter-wide floor tiles spun sideways and fell into the abyss opening beneath them. Crossbeams that had supported the floor spun downward into the inky black, leaving only the two daises at each end of the chamber.
The floor fell away from the throne first, leaving the massive chair on a floating island at the end of the room. Cradling the egg with both arms, Silver ran forward, jumping from tile to tile, his foot leaving one seconds before it fell into the darkness below.
Bounding from collapsing tile to falling beam, Silver tucked the egg under one arm and grabbed a knife from the sheath on his thigh.
Stabbing it into a pillar, he used it as a handhold and pushed off the column with his feet, launching himself three meters to the next stone support.
Landing on a tile that was already falling, he dropped into the pit. He released his flashlight, letting it spin downwards, circles of light illuminating the endless drop. Propelling himself upwards, with his free hand he grabbed onto the ten-centimeter shelf –that the floor tiles had rested on –which jutted out of the final pillar. Dangling, he looked for a way to pull himself up without dropping the ancient treasure.
“Throw it to me!”
Silver looked at Garry, who stood with his arms wide, flashlight at his feet, leaning out over the precipice towards Silver.
“Why the hell did you bang the gong?” Silver slowly turned his body, struggling to keep his grip.
“Do you think I knew what would happen?” Garry laughed. “Do you think I had any clue that it was a deadman’s switch that would do all this?”
Silver’s eyes narrowed.
“Just throw me the egg,” Garry leaned further over, “and then I can throw you a rope so we can both get out of here.”
Silver looked around for another way, glancing at the straps of his knapsack on his shoulder. The sound of distant stone collapsing could be heard, ropes and pulleys creaking back the way they had come.
“You’ll never get your rucksack off your back without dropping the egg, or falling,” Garry sighed, standing up and crossing his arms. “Just throw me the egg, so we have a chance of it getting back up to the world, or both of us, being lost forever.”
Silver nodded and dropped his free arm. Garry gasped as the egg fell, landing in Silver’s open hand. Swinging his arm upward, the mercenary tossed the invaluable artifact underhand to the military agent.
Garry leaned forward, catching the egg with both hands, his weight balanced on the balls of his feet, swaying at the edge of the precipice. He fell back on his heels and dropped to the floor on his butt.
“You did that on purpose,” Garry snarled.
“Do you think I had any clue that it would do that?” Silver reached up with his free hand, grabbing the tiny ledge with the fingertips of both hands. “Throw me a rope, and let’s get out of here.”
“Right, about that,” a smug smile spread across Garry’s face, “Central Command said the less folks that knew about this, the better. And since you’re just hired muscle, it seems that you’re disposable. An acceptable loss. But England thanks you for your services.”
“Garry,” Silver gritted his teeth, looking around for another way to safety, “I’ll see a bullet in your head if you’re serious, and will beat you within a centimeter of your life if you’re just messing with me. Throw me a rope.”
“Silver,” Garry sighed, turning to leave, “you always were crap with people. Have a good life.”
Whistling ‘God Save the King” Commander Garry Pepper tucked the egg under one arm, bent and retrieved his electric torch, and walked into the dark tunnel that led out. The creaking noise of the booby trap grew louder, and the floor between the gong and exit collapsed behind the man.
Silver stared at his employer and partner’s receding back and the circle of light that highlighted Garry’s silhouette. Once the room was completely dark, the mercenary blinked out the activation code for his multi-vision lenses. The contacts cycled through their settings until landing on the infrared-lowlight combo. Garry’s fading heat signature dimmed as Silver looked in the direction in which the man had gone.
Holding on with his right hand, Silver reached down to his left thigh and grabbed a cylinder about twenty centimeters long from its pants’ pocket. Aiming in the direction of the wall behind the gong, he pressed a button on the side of the cylinder. A steel dart, with filament attached, launched across the space, the cord unwinding behind. Garry’s distant laugh played a discordant melody to the harmony of the resounding noise of the gong being struck and it echoed throughout the room for a second time. The sound of rushing liquid in the copper pipes could be heard as another trap was triggered. The cord fell limp, slipping in the chasm below.
Winding the cord back into the handle with the press of a button, Silver tried again. This time it struck the stone of the support beside the gong, biting into it. Holding the small baton against the pillar in front of him, Silver pressed another button and an anchor spike shot out with a puff of compressed air, penetrating the stone.
Releasing his grip on the pillar, his fingers cramping, he gripped the baton with both hands. Sliding a switch on the steel shaft, the baton slid upward along the filament line with a mechanical whir, carrying Silver towards the gong.
His contacts showed the cooler stone coming closer and he swung his legs up, clearing the floor of the platform before he hit it.
Letting go of the steel shaft, he laid on his back on the cold rock floor for a moment, rubbing his hands until feeling fully returned. Sitting up, he assessed the situation.
Pulling a small square box from a pouch, he clipped the light to his harness and flicked it to life, blinking the code to turn his contacts back to normal.
Silver grabbed the steel baton, and with a few presses of buttons, released the steel tips, reset new ones, retracted the cord, and set it up to use again.
Moments later, now across the chasm and in the hall leading out, he reset the device again and stowed it. He jogged down the hall towards the exit, caution discarded in the need to catch up to Garry.
The thin copper pipes dripped faster now, the liquid hissing when it hit the wood support beams that held the walls and ceiling in place. The acrid smell permeated the air and Silver picked up his pace, wary of what that may mean.
A mist issued from a pipe ahead. Slowing to look, Silver noted the small clogged holes alternating on the underneath or side of the pipes every meter. The pressure of the liquid in the pipes were clearing more of the openings every few moments. With small popping noises, more of the pungent liquid sprayed into the tunnel ahead and behind him.
Reaching out with a hand and watching the vapor land on his glove, Silver saw the material becoming etched.
“Acid,” Silver muttered, “it’s old, but…”
Silver broke into a run.
At his top speed, the mercenary took corners with reckless abandon, staying to the far side of the tunnel wherever the acid had cleared the plugged holes in the pipes. He dodged streams, sprays, and fogs of the flesh-eating liquid, running headlong down the only route to freedom.
A cracking noise sounded from above, and a waterfall of the harsh liquid spilled from the ceiling on his left. The dirt overhead sprinkled down around him as he ran, a stray draft giving him a temporary reprieve from the harsh smell.
Increasing his speed, Silver pressed against the wall to get past the flow, holding one arm up to block as much as he could.
Now, at a dead sprint, bouncing off the sides of the tunnel as he took corners, ducking, Silver broke into the main chamber housing the terracotta army of Emperor Qin Shi Huang.
A bullet ricocheted off the compacted dirt next to Silver’s head as light flooded the room.
Chapter 2
“You just don’t give up, do you?” Garry’s forehead creased and his lip pulled back in a sneer. “Why can’t you just quit?”
“I try to keep calm and carry on, you know?” Silver straightened, shading his eyes from the bright lights and looked around.
Garry was to Silver’s right, in the opening of the passageway that led to the surface. To the left, in the excavated pits of the mausoleum, thousands of terracotta soldiers and hundreds of ceramic horses stood in neat rows.
A half dozen frameworks with LED lights were angled around the site, casting huge shadows away from the two men. Silver stood in the newest passage –rivulets of acid trickling between his boots –dug out by himself and Garry hours before.
“Don’t get cheeky with me,” Garry leveled his weapon at Silver, “this is done. I was just hoping to not have to do it myself.”
“Because you’re a coward and don’t have the balls to do the hard things?” Silver raised his eyebrows and tilted his head. “Or is it because you wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight?”
“You really don’t know how to talk to people, do you?” Garry aimed down the sight of the pistol. “Especially when they’re holding your life in their hands.”
“You’re going to kill me either way,” Silver took a balanced stance, spreading his legs shoulder-width apart, “and I’d rather die spitting in your face than licking your boots.”
Garry clicked the hammer back.
Silver spun to the left and ran, zigzagging towards the army of clay statues.
The shot’s echo was muffled by the surrounding dirt and clay.
Silver threw himself down and slid on his hip between the rows of the pottery soldiers.
Glancing down when he came to a stop, he checked his torso and legs, patting at himself, mentally searching for the pain that should accompany a gunshot.
“You can come out now,” a lilting, softer voice said, “the bad man won’t be bothering you anymore. Never much trusted the military anyway.”
Silver sat up, and not finding an entry or exit wound, realized he hadn’t been shot. He stood and peeked around the statues to see who had saved him.
“That’s it,” a sandy-haired young woman adjusted her beige vest, fiddling with the many pockets on it as Silver looked between the man-shaped artifacts. Dipping the muzzle of the high-powered rifle she held, she beckoned him closer. “Come on out now, it’s safe.”
Silver moved with caution, keeping a statue between him and the newcomer.
“You’re a shy one, aren’t you?” She tilted the brim of her ghillie hat up, smiling a crooked smile. “I’m Hank Smith, an archeologist. And I think we’re on the same side.”
“Hank is a…” Silver began.
“Yes,” Hank swatted at an orange clay stain on the leg of her khaki cargo pants, “it’s a boy’s name. It’s short for Henry.”
“But Henry is also a…” Silver started.
“Yeah,” Hank interrupted, putting a hand on her hip, and the muzzle of the rifle raising just a tad, “a boy’s name. It’s short for Henrietta. But I prefer Hank, ok? Is there a problem with that?”
“No, I don’t have any issue with your name, who you are, or what you do,” the corner of Silver’s mouth twitched upward, and he realized he needed to steer the conversation in a different direction before he got himself shot. “Speaking of which, what do you do and what stroke of luck brought you here?”
“Archaeology. Been hunting that thing for months.” Hank gestured at the satchel that held the egg and lay next to Garry’s crumpled body, blood trickling from the hole in the dead man’s temple. “We’ve been following you for a while now, trying make sure anything you recovered –or liberated, or whatever you want to call it –ended up where it belongs…in a museum for everyone to appreciate.”
“That belongs to my employer,” Silver said, nodding towards the bag.
“Oh, you mean this guy?” She nudged the corpse at her feet with the toe of her boot. “This guy who probably wanted it for selfish reasons? Maybe to blackmail another government? Or a gift for some rich benefactor so they support the next war or election? It doesn’t look like he was going to pay you anyway. Do you still want to stick with the story that it’s his?”
Hank placed the butt of her rifle on her hip and stared at Silver. She had followed this man, well, followed his trail, across three countries for the past month. He was a capable foe, and was dangerous to cross. Her research on him showed he rarely failed any job he took.
Silver watched the young woman in front of him. She had the high ground, a weapon in her hand, and had already saved him once. If she had wanted him dead, it would have happened already. Also, she felt good, as in right and well meaning.
Silver shook his head slowly.
Hank let out a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding.
“You’re a pretty good shot with that,” he nodded at the rifle, “where’d you learn to use it?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Hank said too quickly, too defensively, showing that many people questioned her and made her feel as if she had to defend who she was, “I learned it, and that’s all that you need to worry about. I’m fast in addition to accurate, so don’t try anything. They used to call me the Hawk –back in my school days –because I could spot a target from a damn sight further than they could. Keep in mind, you aren’t all so far that I even need to squint. Any more questions?”
Silver was surprised by the woman’s short tirade. He’d meant his comment and question as a compliment, showing respect for her skill with the weapon. She’d taken it as a personal attack, and shut down further conversation about the topic. Silver noted that, and decided he’d keep his distance.
“Yeah,” Silver moved his hand to his belt, noticing movement behind Hank, “you said ‘we’ have been following me. Who is ‘we’?”
“Oh, myself and my partner,” Hank moved to one side and a tall woman stepped from the shadows of the tunnel behind her, “Joan.”
The newcomer glared at Silver and tucked a stray dark hair back into the tight bun on the top of her head. Her bare arms showed dirt up to where her shirt sleeves had been torn off. Resting one hand on the butt of her Ruger, she leaned on the wall with the other.
“She’s a master tracker,” Hank continued, “on foot or virtually, and handles the business side of things. Joan Williams, this is…”
“Silver,” he said, stepping out from behind the statues.
“Oh geez, Hank,” Joan pulled her firearm from its holster, and swung the butt towards Hank’s head, “you just never shut the hell up, do you?”
Hank turned to see the gun collide with her face, hard. The blonde woman’s head jerked back, and she collapsed to the floor, unconscious.
“Stupid girl is smart, but will never get anywhere in this business,” Joan looked down at Hank, and kicked the unconscious woman in the ribs.
Silver moved, drawing Joan’s attention.
Joan swung the weapon towards Silver, who dove behind the row of pottery soldiers again. Gunfire cracked and the head of an earthenware warrior exploded.
Landing face first in the dirt, Silver rolled onto his back, pulling throwing knives from his harness.
Why the hell does everyone have a gun except me? Silver thought, rising to a crouch and peeking towards the only exit, and why did I give mine up before entering the country, and trust Garry to have a spare?
“Enjoy your tomb, moron,” Joan shouted over her shoulder, striding up the dirt passage, gun in one hand and the satchel with the dragon’s egg in the other.
Hank lay on the ground at the foot of the ramp, next to the SIS agent she had killed.
Silver ran forward as Joan disappeared around the corner. Leaping over the prone forms of his dead partner and the younger woman, he sprinted up the tunnel.
An explosion threw Silver backwards, a cloud of dust and hot air rushing out of the passage as he landed next to Hank, on top of Garry. Dirt and rocks cascaded around them as the shaft out collapsed.
Scrambling backwards, Silver grabbed the girl’s arm and dragged her after him. The strap from her rifle entangled her other arm, and the barrel of the weapon snagged on the stones of the floor.
Silver stumbled at the unexpected resistance, yanked Hank’s arm, lost his grip, and fell backwards.
Hank moaned, breathing in a mouthful of ceiling. Coughing and hacking, she rolled to her side, pulling her rifle under her as she attempted to spit out what she’d just inhaled.
“Come on,” Silver pushed himself to his feet, grabbed her arm and pulled her up to stand beside him as she tried to catch her breath and clear her mouth of dirt, “I have a plan.”
“Dude,” Hank gasped, “I’m dying here, let me catch my breath.”
“Catch it while we run,” Silver wrapped an arm around her waist and lifted her, moving forward, “otherwise we’ll both be dying. That damn passage is a goner already.”
“What happened?” Hank pushed away from Silver’s grasp, stumbling. “And I can run fine all by myself.”
“Fine, then run. Follow me, but watch out for the acid,” Silver moved back into the tunnel he had come from just a few minutes before, stepping around the corrosive rivulets. “Your girl Joan blew up the tunnel, collapsing the whole thing on top of you. Guessing you weren’t too close?”
Hank supported herself with one hand on the wall, following the dark-skinned man deeper into the underground complex.
Silver must be wrong; Joan couldn’t have done that. She was a friend and a partner. She wouldn’t have done this. Looking around as they moved into the dimly lit tunnel, dust dancing across the passage, the truth began to sink in for Hank.
“No, no, no…” Hank muttered, “this is a priceless site, the tomb of the first Emperor of China, there is no other like it.”
Glancing back over her shoulder, Hank raised her voice so Silver could hear her also, “Did I mention that Joan is also a demolition expert? How could she do this to a wonder like this?”
“Looks like we were both betrayed by someone we trusted,” Silver slowed, angling his flashlight upwards to find where he had felt the breeze from earlier. “par for the course, though.”
“My head hurts. Am I rambling?” Hank paused, looking around, then moved forward to catch up. “Where are you leading us? There are no exits this way.”
“There wasn’t,” Silver jabbed at the ceiling with his blades. Soil fell in clods at their feet. “But I think there may be one now, thanks to the booby traps.”
The two of them pulled themselves from the crevasse in the earth, spitting dirt and swearing. Blinking in the waning daylight, Silver looked back. Hushing Hank, he pointed at the growing crowd a half kilometer away, near the entrance to the tomb.
“They look angry,” Silver kept his voice and body low.
“Can you blame them?” Hank spat, sitting on the ground and smearing wet loam from her clothes. “The resting place of one of their countries greatest heroes and leaders was just desecrated and possibly destroyed. I’m not even a native, but I’d be ready to kill someone with my bare hands if I caught them anywhere near here.”
“You mean like Joan?” Silver asked.
Hank just grunted.
“Then maybe we should be a bit less conspicuous about our presence here?” Silver moved away, crouching.
“Oh,” Hank covered her mouth, eyes wide at the realization of danger, “yeah, I guess so.”
Hank shouldered her rifle and scrambled to catch up to her newly acquired guide.
“It’s a shame we’re leaving empty handed,” she said when she caught up.
“Who says we are?” Silver held up a jade stamp, “I happened to pick up the He Shi Bi when rummaging through Qin Shi Huang’s junk drawer.”
“You found the Emperor’s lost seal?” Hank stopped in her tracks. “That’s been missing since the tenth century.”
“Yes,” Silver looked over his shoulder, a sly grin splitting his face, “but not anymore. And we should keep moving, before we bring half the province down on us.”
“Where are we going?” she whispered.
“We’re going east,” Silver muttered, “then I’m going back to London.”
“London is nice this time of year,” Hank glanced back over her shoulder to make sure they hadn’t been spotted by the growing mob.
“Don’t you have somewhere else to go? London’s always miserable; rain, tourists, traffic, angry drunks,” Silver turned towards the south, heading for a safe house he had set up.
“Naw,” Hank moved to walk beside her new travelling companion and slapped him on the shoulder, “I don’t mind all those things, just more folks with interesting stories. I think I’ll tag along and keep you company.”
“You do what you need to do,” Silver eyed her sideways, “but first, we have a train to catch.”
Chapter 3
“Croaker, I don’t need a little brother, a roommate, a dog, a cat, a painted box turtle, or anything else,” Silver said into the receiver of his cardphone, “I like my place clean and quiet.”
“Fine,” said a voice that sounded like it had been gargling gravel for half a century, “but if you’re not careful, you’ll end up like me.”
“Well traveled?” Silver said, leaning forward and picking up his glass of water.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Croaker laughed.
“Half is about all I know,” the conversation lulled as Silver took a deep drink. “So, do you have a line on a job or not?”
“Yeah, I do. It’s with the Royal British Museum. And before you say no, I want to point out that the museum isn’t a part of the actual government. I know you’re once bitten, twice shy considering what you just went through.”
“Let me think about it,” Silver sighed, leaning back on his grey couch, and tossing the cardphone onto the table in front of him. The sound of Croaker puffing on a pipe could be heard through the speakers in the room.
Dust danced in the ray of sunlight intruding on his third-floor flat in downtown London, pressing through the vertical blinds and the graphene window treatments. Three layers; the first layer was two molecules thick to prevent bullets from piercing the window, the second layer was wired to the solar collector, and the third layer could be clear, opaque, or have his computer screen projected through it.
Standing and wandering around the apartment, Silver shuffled through the three pieces of mail on the counter. The place was simple with just a bedroom and bathroom on one side of the living room, and the kitchen and dining room combined on the other side. The bar overlooked the small living room and was where he usually ate his meals. Staring at the metal appliances in the kitchen, he made a mental note to call the cleaning service to dust.
“Did you think about it yet?” Croaker’s voice interrupted Silver’s thoughts.
“It’s only been a minute and a half,” Silver stretched, tapping at the beam in the center of the ceiling.
“Yeah,” Croaker slurped from his drink, making Silver cringe at the noise, “and I’m really bored now. Do you want the job or not?”
“Yes,” Silver heaved another sigh, “why not? When and where?”
Hank whistled, placing the trinket she had picked up at the junk shop in Lintong District on the shelf, adjusting the half dozen other knick-knacks around it to make room.
Stepping back, she scanned the four wall units and admired her collection.
“You know,” Hank said to no one in particular, “the bright yellow wall behind it really does make these treasures pop when you look at them.”
A sleek, black cat pressed against her leg and let out a raucous meow.
“Oh Frick, I know you like the lavender of the dining room better,” she bent to scratch the cat’s head, “and if you keep this up, Frack will get all jealous.”
Glancing at Frack, the ginger cat glaring at her through slitted eyes from the kitchen counter –where she wasn’t supposed to be –Hank smiled and stood up.
Whistling again, she moved to the counter and patted Frack, who growled even as she started to purr. Frick still wound himself around Hank’s legs.
“Darcy,” Hank shouted to her roommate, “I’m going to the café, can I bring you anything back?”
“No thanks,” came a voice from one of the back rooms, “I’m going out in a bit. Be home late, so don’t wait up with cocoa and popcorn again, ok?”
“No promises!” Hank laughed.
Moving around Frick to the kitchen table, Hank fluffed the fresh daisies there, and then picked up her lunch dishes.
Depositing the plate, glass, and flatware in the sink, she turned and typed a few items into the grocery tablet on the fridge. She pressed send so it would deliver the list to both hers and Darcy’s phones.
Shouting a goodbye to Darcy, Hank grabbed her keycard and cardphone, and pushed them into her pocket. She moved Frick away from her legs with one foot and slipped out the front door.
Five flights down, she chatted with her landlady for a few minutes before heading outside. This was one of the streets that had been ‘reclaimed’, meaning car traffic was prohibited and people could sit on benches, stroll along the street, sunbathe, or even paint in the road if they liked.
Hank detoured into a corner shop, chatting with the shopkeeper about his wife’s surgery as she bought a pack of gum and some mints.
After that she swung by the café for her favorite drink; a plain black coffee. It was an affection she’d picked up from being on dig sites. Dark coffee was always available, but the rich, full-bodied stuff that was boiled until it burned was not. She loved it. The barista behind the counter with all their piercings, tattoos, and glib stories about the characters in the tube on the way to and from work kept her chatting for long enough to order a second cup.
An hour later Hank was on her way to work. It was about time she faced the music after filing her report about what happened in China.
Silver sat at the bar of The Cask & Custard Pot. The pub had a rich history of punk music and bar brawls until it was bought out and cleaned up by Kevin, the tall, thin man behind the bar. The place was done in a classic dark wood décor, and a huge stone fireplace dominated one wall.
Kevin was friendly without being intrusive, smart enough to know when a man wants to be let alone, but attentive enough that everything was always taken care of. A nod or shake of the head when making eye contact was enough to refill a glass or be left alone for another ten minutes.
The hall leading to the kitchen and loo was just past the end of the bar, towards the back, and a small stage took up a corner opposite the front door and vestibule. A large picture window ran most of the front wall beside the entrance, showing the rain-slicked streets reflecting the neon signs and yellowed solar streetlights beyond.
Hank favored this place, with its smells of decades of spilled alcohol, and often came here with friends. Silver had surveilled her, making sure she wasn’t being followed or in any other danger from their activities in China. Just because Hank ‘the Hawk’ Smith constantly chattered through a 12,000-kilometer train trip, insisting on sticking with him, and being annoying in general, didn’t mean he wanted her to come to harm.
Glancing in the mirror over the bar from his seat near the front window, Silver watched Hank and her friends laughing and drinking at a table near the empty stage. The half wall of the foyer and a coat rack blocked Hank’s direct line of sight.
The dinner rush had come and gone, and the night crowd was settling in. Silver nursed his malt whiskey and the glass of water beside it.
The table with the group of twenty-somethings overflowed with laughter, and the next words caught Silver’s ear.
“You had to run for your life from an angry mob in the Shaanxi province of China?” the man at Hank’s table asked.
“I didn’t run,” Hank’s lilting, light accent replied, “I crept away like a cat in an alley.”
Silver lifted his eyes and glanced in the mirror, keeping his head bowed.
“I spent weeks finding the parts to build you the perfect weapon, set to your exacting standards; didn’t you have it with you?” the man asked.
“Sydney’s a fine girl,” Hank giggled. “but she isn’t suicidal and thought that discretion was the better part of valor. She, nor I, am an idiot.”
“Okay, but tell us about this man,” the woman at the table demanded, her voice thick with drink, “tall, dark, and handsome?”
“You’re worse than him,” Hank sighed and pointed across the table, “always thinking with your downstairs. But yes, he was tall.”
“My downstairs?” the drunken friend slurred, “You can’t even use the grown-up word for it?”
The group laughed.
“Slim, dark skin, half a meter taller than you or me Hank,” the woman purred, leaning back in her chair, hands running down her sides before grasping the table in a white-knuckled grip, “and a shaved head? Mmm, mm, mm! I would take him down like a charging rhino, girl!”
Silver had heard enough and had no desire to have anything further to do with this woman, no matter how flattering a description and performance Hank’s friend was giving the bar to witness.
Double tapping the cardphone sensor to pay, Silver nodded at Kevin, and slipped out the door. He had a long day tomorrow.
In the mirror behind the bar Hank watched the tall, dark form slip out the door and her eyes narrowed. Raising her pint to her friends, she spoke.
“Here’s to old friends,” Hank toasted as the others raised their glasses, “and to the new.”