“Well ain’t this just James dandy,” Gell groused. “The hell’s a thing like this doin’ here?”
“I thought you said you knew this place. Knew the terrain like the back of your hand.” Scarlet’s voice was even icier than normal; clearly something was bothering her.
“Darlin’, I swear to you, I been here more times than I care to tell. And ain’t never been nothin’ like this.”
“Talk?” Katja asked, startled to hear that the wordling had anything in particular to say to her. “What about?”
“I was just wondering… do you think you’re prepared to take over? You know, if something should happen to Gell.”
“What? Take over what? What would happen?”
Sarai smiled cloyingly. “Never can be sure.”
Dark — that’s what it was. There was no moon, there were no stars, there were no torches or bonfires, there weren’t even any damn fireflies. It was completely dark. Which, of course, was exactly what Scarlet had in mind.
It was her turn to stand watch, while Gell and Thierry slept. She thought it was more than a bit ridiculous to have her standing watch at all, since the primary thing she was watching for was a wizard, and she was the only member of the party who wasn’t able to sense magic, but it was her watch nonetheless. Her keen hearing would be useful, she figured wryly, should Blackwell decide to walk at them or maybe attack on a bicycle instead of just using some of the old black magic.
The great expanse of the Renstone Fields stretched out in front of them as far as the eye could see. Grassland, flat and serene, occasionally interrupted by a natural fixture, such as a grove of trees or a mound of stones, or perhaps a less-natural fixture, such as the ruins of one of the many settlements founded in this accursed place. Truly, the Renstone Fields were a peculiar location; they appeared friendly and inviting, teeming with wildlife and ripe for cultivation, but they were in reality home to some dark power or dread beast, and any attempted homesteaders were not long for this world.
Such was the story of the Renstone Fields, which Sarai was busily acquainting her companions with as they traveled.
“Well, ain’t this just dandy,” Gell was moping. “Stuck in the middle of godforsaken who-knows-where, some kinda crazy fool with a robot arm and a fistful o’ evil witchcraft on our tail, I can’t so much as hold a weapon, and I ain’t had any supper yet.”
“Relax, Gell,” Thierry consoled, not for the first time, nor likely for the last. “Blackwell won’t find us. And the arm is going to be fine; not for a while, mind you, but there’s no permanent damage.”
It was, as usual, raining in the city of St. Langostine on the evening our heroes sauntered into town. The city was a nice enough place so long as you didn’t mind the rain; it was a sprawling place of gothic architecture and deep shadows, a spider’s web of roadways running amongst its cottages and cathedrals, ferrying its thousands of inhabitants along their daily routines. St. Langostine was a walled city, and the walls had long ago become too confining, such that the city was forced to continue its expansion in the only directions available to it: up and down. Tall spires lanced up from the skyline, piercing the clouds above, inhabited by priests and plutocrats, criminals and wizards. In the sewers beneath the city those too poor or too politically unpopular to live in the city above built their own city beneath, a sprawling landscape in its own right of makeshift huts and shanties. Amidst all of it, countless ordinary people — those neither rich nor poor, neither politically powerful nor politically objectionable — bustled along, carrying out the activities of their daily lives, caring more about putting food on the table and clothes on their backs than about wordstones and wizards and Puritans. In other words, St. Langostine was a thoroughly ordinary city.
Blackwell’s confidence was unshaken — he still held all the cards in this hand, and he knew it. Gell could do nothing but stand beneath him and watch sullenly.
“You wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to your little friend, now would you, Puritan?” the mage oozed. “Perhaps it would be best if you’d set down that cleaver of yours and surrender. After all, it’s you I’m really after. This wretch… is insignificant.” He sent another jolt up the metal arm, and Thierry writhed in agony.
“Look, darlin’, I ain’t tryin’ to cause any trouble, but are you sure this is the right place?”
Gell’s question wasn’t unwarranted, considering they’d been wandering through this musty cavern for several days already, and there was little sign of anything but more cavern ahead.
“Yes, I’m sure. Honestly, Gell, sometimes I think you just don’t trust me.”
Gell and Scarlet could see the flames long before they reached Grady’s Quay.
“Shit,” Scarlet cursed, “they’re already here. Now what do we do?”
“We go a little faster,” Gell replied, breaking into a run.
“Who?” Katja asked, puzzled.
“Friend of mine from way back,” Gell replied. “He’ll be able to tell us more about this Hand thing supposedly has Sarai’s little brother.”
“I find it hard to believe that anybody in a backwater dump like this could know anything about… well, anything, really.”