Chapter Twelve: Infernics

+++++Ezra+++++

Now… Ezra wasn't a racist, but…

That sounded really bad, but it was true. At least he'd never considered himself a racist, but the past week had taught him that, when he was about to be in a desperate escape from danger, it was because angry half-tree men were after him. That's just the way things had played out. Instead, this time, it was a human and a kao-alta hired by the old man to bring him in.

Yacha, knowing he'd been spotted, pecked on the glass twice, made a little mocking warble, and then flitted off. Ezra heard two men downstairs talking to Mama Pathula and, of course, she let them up the stairs. She'd let just about anybody up the stairs if they were polite about it, though she'd also threaten them with varying levels of physical violence if they tried to nick her boarders' things.

"She said the third door," came the muffled voice from outside.

Anise mouthed 'sorry' to them, and Ezra knew she was. Anise wasn't the duplicitous type and he doubted she'd ever told a convincing lie in her life. The door clicked open and the two men strode in - well-dressed like mid-level civil servants might be, right down to the dark suspenders and powder-blue linen shirts with the rolled-up sleeves. They had a calm air about them, like a drowsy cobra might have - relaxed and uncoiled, but you could tell there was a bad time waiting to happen if you did anything to provoke it.

"Miss Derrigin, your uncle would like you to wait outside," the kao-alta said, his voice smooth like silk.

"W-why?" Anise said. "What are you going to do?"

"Have a talk," the human said - his voice was the opposite, hoarse and gruff, and the little pale stripe along the front of his neck suggested that he might have survived a slit throat at some point in the distant past.

"In that case, I'd like to stay and listen…"

The men glanced to one another and, without a word, the kao-alta made to escort Anise from the premises, whether she wanted to leave or not. She turned to square at him.

"Stop." It was a harder, colder anger statement than he'd ever heard from her before, like something of the naïve and friendly girl had died, replaced by something steelier.

When she held her hand up, fingers outstretched and palm exposed, the man rose right up into the air, terror replacing his gray calm as the sunglasses tumbled from his big, frantic eyes. He flailed about, but there wasn't much to do since he was being suspended a foot off the floor by magic and there was nothing for him to push off of.

"Shit…" the human grumbled, and he made for Ezra.

"You worm," Rill said. Her hand went for the man's face, the heat of her magical fire sizzling away at his flesh.

Ezra might have expected a scream or a panicked cry, but the man just grunted, unholstered an alchemical pistol, and shot twice, the smell of zinc and smoke puffing into the air. Rill moaned like she sometimes did when waking up, but instead she stumbled to the floor, writhing and clutching at her belly. The flesh of his face still smoking, the man turned the pistol toward Ezra - but he failed to grasp quite how fast Ezra was. He dashed in and snatched the pistol right out of the man's hand.

He probably should have turned the pistol around and shot, but he'd never shot an alchemical pistol, and neither was his gut instinct to aim and shoot. Instead, he threw the pistol as far out the door as he could and, when the man was distracted, shoved as hard as he could. The man stumbled back just as Anise's hold on the kao-alta faltered, and they collided with one another, stumbling out of the room and cracking against the back of the corridor.

"You try to kill somebody in my bloody house?" Mama Pathula growled, storming up the steps with a meat cleaver grasped in her robust fist.

The kao-alta drew his own pistol and was a fraction of a second from shooting Ezra's landlady when two of the other boarders - the pair of gray-feathered dortheks in the room next to theirs - burst out from their room.

"You'll never take us alive!" the woman in the pair screeched.

Two shots cracked out, though Ezra couldn't tell if they'd struck anybody. As an outright melee brawl erupted in the hallway Ezra hefted Rill with far more strength than he thought he had and stumbled toward the stairs with Anise hot on his heels. The pistol cracked again and plaster skittered down from above Ezra's head. The front door was slightly ajar, so he shouldered right through it as he ran, hoping he hadn't bumped Rill too badly.

He saw a small horseless carriage right by the road - already, the locals were eyeing it avariciously, wondering whether its many valuable parts were ripe for the scavenging like the luxury carriage that had rolled to a stop across the street the week before. It would make a great getaway vehicle. Anise had the same thought - she dashed past him and hopped into the driver's seat. Ezra climbed into the back, which was barely wide enough for him with Rill curled over his lap.

"I… I can't tell if she's breathing…" he cried. The front of her blouse was warm and wet with blood and her head lolled as he shifted. He felt for a pulse and, as he did, she let out a little groan, wincing.

"We'll get help," Anise said. She pulled the brake off, pumped life into the ignition crystal, and swerved out onto the street. People scurried out of the way before them and, receding behind them and stumbling out of Mama Pathula's were the pair of hired thugs Fenrik had sent.

Anise made for the bridge to the Old City - it was only a block away. If they made it over, they would cross into the Old Arbalest neighborhood, which Ezra knew pretty well. There were dozen places he could think of to hide and two or three where he might be able to get medical help for Rill. The carriage grumbled over the muddy cobblestones of Chartham and onto the bridge, swerving past the slower traffic and nearly tumbling over when Anise turned too quickly.

"Take a left at Friend's Circle!" Ezra shouted - that was two blocks after the bridge.

"Now?" Anise shouted… they were in the middle of the bridge.

"What?"

Suddenly, the world tilted and it was everything Ezra could do to keep Rill from caroming all over the carriage interior. The carriage spun, tipped onto its side, and skittered across the bridge, coachmen shouting and horses whinnying as it spun along the smooth stone of the bridge. For a moment, Ezra thought Anise had actually turned at the middle of the bridge and knocked them over. That misconception was dashed an instant later when the whole side of the carriage was ripped to scrap and tossed aside by sorcerous power. Fenrik of Westval floated through the air toward them, eerie blue energies arcing about his body.

Abstractly, Ezra knew Fenrik was a powerful sorcerer, but most of the magic he'd seen the old man do were related to controlling his thrall-plug, charging or draining crystals, or mixing up potions, all of which he did effortlessly. The old man was no less capable when it came to the visually-impressive aspects of sorcery - but doing so inside his own home would have caused untold damage. Fenrik wasn't so worried about damage now. Ezra felt himself lifted through the air, the magical force of Fenrik's grip crushing him to where he could barely breathe.

Malice gleamed in the sorcerer's eyes, and Ezra worried that the bastard was about to squish him like a bug. Maybe he was about to do just that, but he needed Ezra closer so he could savor his futile desperation. Ezra was so close that he could have punched Fenrik, could practically smell the old man's breath, but his limbs were held in place as if by knots of steel. But then Fenrik's gaze flitted down and he spotted the gravely-injured Rill and, for just a moment, his control faltered. Just enough for Ezra, still suspended mid-air, to place one well-timed kick between the old man's legs. He thought he felt something rupture.

In an instant, he was unceremoniously dumped to the street. Anise helped him up, scurried over to give her writhing uncle a well-deserved kick to the teeth, and then helped Ezra carry Rill the rest of the way across the bridge and into the relative safety of Old Town.

+++++Ezra+++++

He led them three blocks from the bridge, stopping twice to set Rill down and rest, for the adrenaline had drained from his system and his arms were rapidly becoming burning, useless noodles. Anise helped him with her magic, but it wasn't much - she'd about exhausted herself lifting the kao-alta thug earlier and would need time to focus if she was to recover more than a trickle. After what seemed like far too long, they reached the little row of run-down storefronts that included the Mochine-wei, which translated as 'Our Clinic' in the urmal language. From what Ezra had observed, the urmal were good people.

"Five brownbacks!" the medic shouted. He was an urmal, just like all of the patients in the little waiting area. The several other patients in the clinic seemed only slightly concerned that two people had just carried a bleeding, unconscious human into their clinic.

"She's dying!"

"Then you'd better cough up the brownbacks, human!"

Well… they were good people for the most part. Flaws and all, they were still people. Fortunately, Anise was with them, and five hundred brownbacks was barely a rounding error to her parents. She paid the man, who indicated that Ezra should place Lisa on the patient table. The medic turned to another patient and held up his fingers. "Ten minutes, Miss Yawnjee, sorry… better give her a brownback for her time, too," he muttered to Anise.

Finally, thankfully, the medic looked over Lisa, inspecting her belly before turning her over - there was a fist-sized circle of blood on the back of her blouse, too. Ezra hadn't noticed it.

"First bullet went right through… not much bleeding from the exit wound, so that's good. Not as much as I'd think inside, either… these were very small caliber, weren't they?"

"Not that small," Ezra said, wondering what the medic was getting at. He'd certainly seen smaller alchemical pistols, and these ones had been pretty loud, too…

The medic unbuttoned Rill's blouse to get a good look at the entry wounds, noticing Rill's scar in the process - it was visibly faded from even a few days ago, quite subtle now. He shot Ezra a meaningful glance, his expression softening slightly.

"Infernic?"

In for a brushpin, in for a brownback, Ezra supposed. "Both of us…"

The medic spoke as he worked. "Apologies, then… humans and kao-alta barging in at all hours and demanding my services is… not uncommon. Borrenkin, too… do I look like a botanist?" He used a small pair of tweezers to reach into Rill's wound and extract a round bullet, or at least to start to. He had to clip the wound open further to pull it out, a mushroomed metal slug a centimeter and a half wide. "Not a small caliber slug," he agreed. "I'd want to staunch the internal bleeding and slip her a potion, but healing potions don't grow on trees…"

"How much?" Anise asked.

He rolled his eyes at the rich human. "It doesn't matter - we haven't got any. Not a one. We haven't exactly got a mage on staff to invigorate them. Plus, your friend is healing like nothing I've ever seen. Are you sure she didn't get a potion already?"

Ezra was pretty sure. "She'll live?"

The medic nodded. "Her wounds are half as severe as when she got here - anything I could do beyond making sure the bullet doesn't heal somewhere inconvenient would just make things take longer." He shrugged. "I'm afraid to say infernic physiology is not well-understood. I could get you in touch with an expert on that topic…" he shot Ezra a meaningful look.

"I'd like that…"

+++++Ezra+++++

Rill came to an hour later, right around the time the clinic closed. The clinic never really closed, but 'Doc' Tichaw only took emergency cases between sundown and sunup. Ezra helped him scrub the examination area down and straighten the patient area, chatting with him as he did. Something about Tichaw came across as inherently trustworthy - straightforward, no nonsense, and a bit of an asshole if he didn't like you, he was an urmal who said it like it was. Ezra told him all about being a thrall under Fenrik, how he and Rill had escaped and hidden in Chartham, and how the sorcerer had pursued them with hired help.

"A human and a kao-alta… you said the human had a scar on his neck?"

Ezra nodded. "And on his face now, too, I'd bet. Rill gave him an ifrit caress."

"Good. I know those boys, and they're no good. And they're not cheap. When they're not doing bounty for hire, they're doing body work, mostly for Mr. Teak…"

"Mr. Teak?" Anise asked. She was just about useless with cleaning work, but she was at the little front desk making a solid go at getting Doc Tichaw's patient records in order.

"Body work?" Ezra asked.

"You know… when they track somebody expendable-but-desirable down and make sure they're a suitable vessel for demon-thralls…"

Anise gasped. "You mean they…"

Tichaw flicked the side of his head with a stubby finger and nodded. "Braindead. They usually kidnap the victims… I'm not sure I want to know what they do to ensure they're suitable. Black alchemy or literally scrambling their brains, it's not pretty either way."

Actually, that made a lot of sense. From what Ezra had observed, demon-thralls spanned the gamut of races, though they were most often human or kao-alta, the only two of the 'big four' races that could host demons. They were also almost always very attractive by some reasonable standard, from Ezra's boyish good looks to Rill's delicate beauty. He already wanted to do horrible things to Fenrik for how the man had abused him and especially for what he'd done to Rill… but if he'd procured those bodies via 'body work', Ezra was not above deliciously slow torture.

"W… where…" Rill muttered.

Ezra set his dustpan to the side and dashed to her. "Rill!" Her eyes fluttered open, fiery and beautiful, and she smiled, and Ezra wished she could see his eyes, too, because then she might see how beautiful he thought she was. Though that would probably also stoke her ego, and Rill's ego was already pretty healthy.

"Did we win?"

"We escaped…" Relief washed over him, and Ezra wanted to kiss her… but they'd never actually done anything. He had no idea whether Rill had any thoughts on sexual attraction whatsoever, let alone whether she liked Ezra in that way. Instead, he just took her hand, caressing the back with his thumb. "Some infernics are coming to meet us, to…"

"Just one infernic," came a soft, silvery voice. A kao-alta strolled in from the back, a small and slender woman, her skin close to pale aquamarine, her golden ruff with a green tinge, and her large eyes a beautiful moss-green. Apparently, kao-alta infernics did just fine without sunglasses. She smiled as she approached, taking special interest in Rill. "We never move in groups - not in public. I'm Barhu, your humble guide - I'll take you to the rest… Mister Plenakton would love to meet you."

"Are you good to walk?" Ezra asked.

Rill rolled to her feet winced. "Not too quickly."

Apparently, two hours wasn't enough for her to recover from a gunshot wound - not quite. Still, it was pretty damn impressive that she was up and about at all. Ezra helped her over to Barhu, the woman's green eyes taking Rill in with great curiosity. Then she glanced to Ezra and Anise with something close to contempt.

"Just you," she said.

"We're coming," Ezra stated.

Barhu looked him up and down and appeared unimpressed. But she didn't refuse him, either. "If you insist."

Ezra did insist, of course. He wasn't about to let Rill go off with a strange woman, even if she was an infernic like them. He assumed that they were interested in her because she'd been the one who'd made inquiries around Chartham about free infernics while Ezra had mostly been holed up trying not to be seen. Rill was so easy on the eyes that it was hard for people of a certain persuasion not to notice her, but the Chartham Canals were overwhelmingly non-human and most of them only cared about beautiful humans as much as they cared about anybody belonging to a higher social caste. Ezra, on the other hand, had welding goggles bolted to his face. That tended to stick out.

Barhu led them out the back of the clinic and through the claustrophobic, often-impassable alleyways of the Old City. She seemed to know how to navigate them, though, her keen eyes picking out passages through shanties and over crumbled ruins, the night sky a purple blot above them and the old stone buildings black in the faint moonlight. In the distance, Ezra heard carriage traffic, drunken shouting, a baby crying… he heard a lot, actually. His ears were incredibly sensitive without his ear mufflers in, but Anise had taught him how to filter out his senses, and it was becoming more and more instinctual the more he did it. He wondered how he could ever repay her for all she'd done for him, from teaching him Unilog to the potion to teaching him mage meditation techniques… she did almost get him recaptured by Fenrik, but that hadn't been her fault. Speaking of which…

He looked about for a bird. He didn't see anything - but, more importantly, he didn't hear anything. Not a bird flitting about, at least. There were quite a few rats and other assorted vermin crawling about the alleyways. People on one of the rooftops above them were firing off alchemical cracklers, the lights sparkling blue and red.

"I'm Ezra," Ezra whispered.

"Don't care." Barhu said. What was her deal? What had he ever done to her?

"What's wrong with her?" Anise whispered.

Barhu stopped in her tracks, turning to regard Anise angrily. "I don't like strangers much because it's not uncommon for them to end up trying to kill me…"

Ezra cleared his throat. "I have a little experience with that, too…"

"Don't care," she said. They kept moving.

Five minutes later, they arrived at a steel security door at the back of a dilapidated old brownstone. Barhu banged on it three times. A slat opened.

"Passcode?"

"Fuck the Lord Chamberlain in the ass," Berhu said.

The internal lock clunked and the door creaked open, a kao-etema man with a pale, leathery pate and milky gray eyes peering out. He waved them inside and pulled the door shut behind them.

The inside had, in the not-to-distant past, been a squatter's paradise, and the evidence was literally written on the walls - graffiti, impromptu passageways carved out, or unwanted doors plastered over. But only a few people shuffled within now, their curious eyes on the new arrivals. Everything had been de-cluttered and scrubbed clean and disinfectant fumes wafted about. Somebody had taken control of the building recently and was still repurposing it. They passed a sweltering room where three technicians toiled over a crystal-driven printing press, churning out copies of cheap-printed pamphlets, clack-clack-clack, the machine pressing out pages at close to one per second.

Parliament Ratifies Urmal Control Law - You Have No Rights Because They Fear You, the headline said. The demon liberation movement took no issue with editorializing on the front page, it would seem. Finally, they entered a warmly-lit room that had been converted into a reasonably nice lounge, red leather chairs scattered about and a glittering chandelier dangling from the old, cracking plaster of the ceiling. The hushed conversation within stopped the moment the four of them entered.

A man with a bushy blond beard stood from the couch - he was human… well, he was an infernic human, but he was also massive, broader than Gladion and about as tall, close to seven feet if Ezra had to guess. He pulled Berhu into a hug and examined the three of them.

"Who are the other two?"

Berhu snorted. "Her friends, Mr. Plenakton."

"Ah. Well that's too bad… Wyreth, lock them up until I can decide how I want to deal with them…"

A brawny kao-alta went to grab Ezra, but he easily dodged him, stepping back and frowning. "What is wrong with you? We came to you for help!"

"We help our own kind here, not humans who feel like being friendly. In my experience, you are fair weather friends and not to be trusted…"

"I'm infernic like you! Look!" Ezra said. He lifted his shirt to expose… nothing? He gawped and traced a finger around the spot where his thrall-plug scar ought to be. The skin there was the same unblemished, sparsely-haired flesh as the rest of his chest. "Um…"

"A plug scar looks like this," Plenakton said. He lifted his own shirt, revealing a grisly circle of bumps and divots, a truly awful-looking scar. Ezra's had never looked that bad.

"Mine… uh… mine healed…"

"Healed?" Plenakton chuckled, but there wasn't much humor in it. "That's convenient, isn't it? And, pray tell, what sort of miraculous 3Z potion did you use? Not the one from my pamphlet… it's alchemy, not divine intervention…"

"The potion I made," Anise said.

"Oh? And I suppose you're one of us, too?" Plenakton's eyes glittered with what might have been amusement, or possibly mania.

"No… I'm just their friend. I wanted to help? I…" She sounded so scared that Ezra had to fight the urge to shuffle over and comfort her. This infernic leader wasn't at all what he'd expected… frankly, the man seemed a bit unhinged.

"Well… one of us, one human, and one… undecided… I'll tell you what, boy. Why don't you show us your eyes? Take off your goggles and let Berhu take a look with her sharp peepers. No infernic I've ever heard of has normal human eyes, not even the least of us."

"They're bolted on…"

"That's not a problem - bolts can be undone. I'll tell you what…" Plenakton strolled over to a cozy bar area lined with cheap liquors and rummaged through a small lacquered case, returning with a small phial. With a wave of his hand, it flashed cherry-red before taking on a gleaming appearance - it was a healing potion. "What's that human phrase? I'd give my left finger? No… thumb. I'd give my left thumb to see a free infernic with no scar, not even an itty bitty one."

The big infernic gestured to Berhu, who returned with a clinking, jostling bag. He rifled through it and handed Ezra a wrench. Plenakton's hand utterly dwarfed his. His fist had to be twice the size of Ezra's, and he could probably punch like a sledgehammer. Then he took another tool from the bag, strolled over to Anise, and grabbed her by the wrist. There was a horrible crunching sound and Anise screamed, collapsing to the floor when Plenakton let her go, sobbing and clutching at her suddenly-very-bloody left hand. Ezra stifled the urge to vomit - he'd just cut off her thumb.

Ezra charged at Plenakton, but the larger man held him back with a massive hand. "Show me your eyes in the next three minutes and the healing potion will grow your friend's thumb back. Longer than that, and it'll have clotted and her thumb will be lost…"

The man was pretty clearly insane - but Ezra wasn't about to let Anise, who'd only ever helped Ezra, lose her good thumb. With a sob, he took the wrench to his goggles, wincing and grimacing as he undid the bolts, pain shooting through his temples, his hands fumbling against blood and his own nervous agitation to get the bolts off. It was terrible, hasty work, but he had to be quick. Two… three… four bolts. The fourth bloody bolt clacked to the floor, rolling over next to the quietly-sobbing Anise. Blood dripped from Ezra's chin. He went to pull the goggles off, but encountered resistance. He tugged again… they were set in place. Finally, he grabbed them as firmly as he could and yanked, feeling things tug, crack, and tear, pain blooming through his face as internal parts of the goggle apparatus tore free from his skin.

Ezra dropped to his knees, both from the pain and as a desperate plea to the infernic leader. He looked up, hoping against hope for the first time since he'd been in Medias that he didn't have regular human eyes. As Plenakton looked down on him, something seemed to shock the man. Something about Ezra had unsettled the fanatical infernic who'd just cut off Anise's thumb.

With a wavering voice, Plenakton said, "g-give the girl the healing decoction."