The days passed with the quickness of a looming deadline in that treacherous way days are wont to do. Always selling out, aligning with the deadline instead of the procrastinator. Only those last few precious hours leading up to a due date had any real sense of solidarity.
Root had always been a procrastinator, so cramming her days full of errands and recruitments and meetings was new. It gave the days an uncomfortable incongruity, a longness and a shortness crammed into one tense room despite their longtime feud. But it made Root’s pillow all the more inviting at the end of the day.
On the morning of the day before the Evening of Generosity, Root and Azriah made their way through the long, winding, many-gated path toward Urk’s outer bounds.
They’d visited Tohlog again several days prior and put in their order for a hefty stack of forged documents. He’d tried to tell them it’d take a week at least, but they didn’t have that. They’d had to pay extra for a faster turnaround.
Luckily, he’d also offered a lead on the fruit the king requested, a fata pomorgranate. He knew a guy—words he said in no shortage—and would arrange a meeting when the pair returned to pick up the most expensive packet of papers the worlds had ever seen. They just had to hope he would follow through; they didn’t have time to find a plan B.
Azriah was quiet as they progressed through the gates. He surveyed the streets of Urk—and the people scuttling around like bugs under an abruptly disturbed log—with an appraising eye. When a squadron of the Urk military jogged by with their long-skirted mail armor clinking and their bronze spears gripped tight in both hands, his gaze followed them closely. When they disappeared through the next gate, he sighed.
“Do you get the sense we’re poking a bear way bigger than we have any right dealing with?” he asked.
“It’s just a church. They’re just people.”
Azriah shook his head. “I don’t even just mean here in Urk. Though this is surely a bear, I’m talking about the even bigger bear. The periapts, everything…”
“We’ve already poked that one. A few times.”
“That doesn’t mean we keep poking it until it bites.”
“It’s nothing we can’t deal with.”
Azriah pinched his scruff. “You say that. But these stories from the archives… We’re not the first to run around on this little scavenger hunt. People bigger than us have found one, stolen another. Cities have been ruled by one—this city—and paid the price. Warring factions, armies, civilizations rising and falling. At least, unless that’s all part of whatever mythology the church is assembling. Or the archive is just a stash of morbid bedtime stories scant on the details but heavy on the bloodshed.”
“What makes them bigger than us?”
“What?”
“The people in the histories. What makes them bigger than us?”
“They’re in those records, Root. They’re logged in a hundred books locked up in that place. They’re—”
“And maybe we will be too.”
Azriah scoffed. “That’s not how it works. We’re not more than they were. We don’t know anything.”
“What’s it matter, anyway? Are you chickening out of this job or something?”
“No.” Azriah shook his head, and he was firm. “I said I’d help. I trust Vit, and I trust you. And I trust Beel. It’s just something to think about, you know?”
“It’s going to go smoothly,” said Root easily. “The more we discuss this whole plan the king has put together… It’s thorough. It’s genius, really. It’ll work.”
Azriah nodded slowly. “I don’t doubt it,” he said, but the words didn’t melt the look of unease on his face. If anything, it only deepened.
They cleared the final few gates and made it beyond the outermost wall, towering above all the others and so thick the entrance was more tunnel than gate. Outside, they found themselves once again in the maze of shanties, the second-Urk, so unalike the first they might as well have been in different worlds.
And it almost felt like they were. Interior Urk had a distinctly Setoterran feel to it, like its existence in the spirit world was a regretful matter of technicality that had been carefully mitigated over the years with novocaine and flashy wallpaper.
They found Tohlog at his base of operations—an address they’d learned while asking after him when they’d come to place their order. He called it his office. Root called it a woodshed, if she was being generous.
It was hardly more than an awning on the side of a rickety little hut that squatted in the shadow of a taller building, which was rebellious in its relationship to architecture and gravity in a way that Root found unneighborly. Past the shed’s plywood walls, seated within at a workspace by the open door, Tohlog hummed to himself as he drummed rhythmically with a series of heavy rubber stamps. A smear of gold ink shimmered on his cheek like a single saintly tear.
Azriah knocked on the wall. Root took a step back as the building resettled in its foundation.
“Oh, oh!” said Tohlog. He looked up at them with a grin, which vanished as a serious expression chased it off stage. “You two weren’t followed, no?” His head bobbed left, then right, as he poked his jutting face out through the door to survey the surroundings.
“No,” said Azriah. “We’re cautious. For our own sakes, generally, but you stand to benefit.”
“I prefer to keep to sittin’. Low ceilin’ in here, you see? Leaves a nasty bruise, I tell ya.”
“Sure.”
“Everything’s done, right?” asked Root.
“Oh, right to business—sure, sure. And you come here doubtin’ ol’ Tohlog? Doubtin’ my workship?”
“You said the timeline was going to be tight, that’s all.”
Tohlog waved a hand. “No such thing-sa ‘time-line’ really, only a budget.”
“So you’ve got everything ready?”
“O’ course! Course, course. Jus’ finished ‘em up this morn!” From the workspace beside him, Tohlog grabbed a thick stack of papers and knocked their edges on the countertop twice. He waved them closer as he flipped through the bunch. “Everythin’ from your list, right ‘ere. IDs—fakes, one each ’n extras. Two extras—that’s the Tohlog way, you ‘ear? I take good care o’ youse, yea? Fake names, too—I told you they’d come in handy! Good thing we already brainstormed, eh Javier? Eh Vixie? Then we got… forged invites, forged work papers, all to specs as requested. More letters from home parishes. Oh yeah, good ol’ Pastor Fleecenem, heh. And then we got blank stationery, pleny of it. Easy work! All marked wit’ the church’s o-fficial seal, o-fficial header, margins and typeface all matched. I got a good eye for that stuff, you ‘ear? Good as authentic, the whole lot.”
Tohlog showed them the rest of the pile of documents and then shuffled them all into a folder. Azriah handed over payment and tucked the folder away.
“Come on, now, come on—I’ll take youse to my buddy ’n we’ll get your fruit, yea? Said he’d meet you. Come on, come on.” Tohlog locked up his shop—a sheet of plywood placed in front of the open door, thicker and nicer than most—and led them off.
“Hope that’ll all cover it,” he said, gesturing to where Azriah had stowed the folder. “Take care-uh your lil’ operation, whatever. And—and, oh, I’m not askin’, no siree. Just not good form to ask those sortsa questions in business like this.”
“I’m familiar,” said Azriah with a nod.
“But I hope it’s all covered, yea.”
Root shrugged. “A couple of forged blank checks from the church might help.”
Azriah put up a hand as she spoke, then sighed.
“Ha!” Tohlog paused in the street as he shook with laughter. “Yea, that’s a good one. Oh, oh, ha-ah! Forged COE checks. Ha. Oh. Yea, you think I’d be doin’ all this if I could forge a blank check straight from the church coffers? Yea. Ha.”
“I thought you could make anything.”
“Well, sure, within good reason!” Tohlog shook his head as they walked. It canceled out the normal swaying motion of his gait, resulting in his head becoming more still instead. “But checks from the church—they expect some guy like me might come along ’n try a stunt like ‘at. No, their checks are printed special. Watermarks, serial numbers—this odd type-uh paper I still haven’ been able to crack the recipe for—it’s tough stuff! They pulled out all the stops on those.”
Tohlog led them around another corner and through a jagged gap in a low stone wall. He looked both ways—or was that his normal sway?—and then waved them through.
It looked to be an abandoned courtyard—abandoned, in this case, being the word for “no longer in use by the stuffy sort who had first inhabited it.” In the wake of their absence, the courtyard teemed with new life, like a shipwreck crusted with mollusks. Or rather, it teened with new life.
Three adolescents hung around one doorway, exhaling more smoke than air and carving their names into a post. A spirit slept under an eave on one side. Another spirit leaned inconspicuously against one wall. His inconspicuousness might’ve been assisted by a higher collar or different choice of hat.
He was short and full of arms, with a lower jaw that extended so far beyond the upper one that Root couldn’t imagine he’d ever been able to keep his tongue properly moist. Er, tongues; he licked his eyes, one tongue for each, as he waited. Along his neck, bulging sacs expanded and contracted. With each expansion, they glowed a different color—red, purple, yellow—casting a myriad of hues across the cracked stone wall. As if his glowing breaths weren’t distracting enough, he wore a tall hat with a grey and gold zebra-print pattern that reflected his glow on every pulse.
“Ay, Quibbule!” said Tohlog. The glowing spirit turned.
“Ahh, there he is!” Quibbule lifted two arms and clasped both of Tohlog’s.
“These are the buyers,” said Tohlog, waving to the two of them.
Quibbule nodded to them—a jutting motion that put his jaw only closer to them. A thin line of spit dribbled from between two of his pointed teeth. “Looking for a fruit, I heard.”
“A fata pomorgranate,” said Azriah. “You’ve got one?”
The grin that split Quibbule’s face looked painful. His neck sacs bulged with green light. “Oh, I’ve got one.” Quibbule lifted one of his arms and placed a latched case on two of his outstretched palms. The latches flipped open with two twanging clicks and he reached inside.
The fruit that he pulled out was unlike anything Root had seen before—if, that was, she was seeing it now. She really had to concentrate and make sure her eyes didn’t wander with the whoops from the nearby teens or the snoring of the slumbering spirit. When it moved into her periphery, it looked like Quibbule cupped only open air.
But there was something there, at least when she really squinted her eyes and focused. It was deep red and shimmering, glossy and surrounded by a misty haze.
Azriah rubbed his eyes, then put out a hand. “May I?”
“Oh, sure,” said Quibbule. “Only way to make sure you know what you’re getting, really—or make sure you don’t misplace it, haw!”
It hit Azriah’s hand with an audible sound and moved it with a visible weight. It was Root’s only reassurance that the fruit wasn’t less present than her sword.
Azriah examined the fruit in much the same way as a shopper at a produce stall. “All right,” he said after a moment. “How much?”
“Well, these are awful rare. Only grow in desert mirages. Normally I’d charge ten mantles—or more to one of those rich insider shits, haw-haw! But, well, Tohlog here said you lot are going after the big guys, yeah?” He put up three hands. “Don’t even need to confirm or deny. But for you, I’d do eight. Going to a good cause, eh?”
Root and Azriah shared a glance. “Deal,” said Root.
Azriah handed over the money. It got drooled on before it even arrived in one of Quibbule’s hands.
“And, say, you looking for anything else?” asked Quibbule, returning to his case. “I’ve got it all. Cactus? Candy? Dew? Bust? Femo?”
“We’re all set, but thank you,” said Azriah, wiping his hand on his pants.
“Dew?” asked Root, who considered her knowledge of drugs to be firsthand encyclopedic.
“Yeah?” said Quibbule, reaching into the case.
“Sorry, I meant—”
“Oh. You know, dragon dew?”
Root thought about lying to save face, but she was curious. She shook her head.
“Snake venom. I’ve got the powdered stuff here. And none of the cheapo second-rate crap, mine’s straight from upstairs.” The spirit grinned like he was immensely proud of this as he jabbed two thumbs in the other direction.
Azriah stepped in. “We’re all set. But we can’t thank you enough for this,” he said, raising a seemingly-empty hand.
“Sure, sure. You know where to find me.” Quibbule nodded, leaking.
“Good luck to youse both—and your other friends, too,” said Tohlog. “I gotta chat with my buddy ‘ere, but if you got anythin’ else you’re lookin’ for, jus’ holler, yea?” The two spirits set off through another archway as Root and Azriah backtracked the way they’d come.
“What did he mean ‘upstairs,’ you think?” asked Root, whose mind was churning.
Azriah huffed a laugh through his nose. “I don’t know. Every city has their own slang.”
“But he pointed this way—back towards the walls and inner-Urk.”
“So his dealer is inside. Doesn’t matter. We got what we came for.” Azriah held up almost-nothing again as he made room to tuck the fruit into his bag.
Root crossed her arms. “‘Upstairs.’ I don’t know, isn’t that sort of like how people talk about—”
“Wait up!”
Root furrowed her brow when she spotted the voice’s owner. A girl hurried after them—one of the teenagers from the courtyard.
“Uh, hi?” said Root as the girl reached them, out of breath and trying furiously, for some reason, to flatten the flyaways seceding from her head of blonde hair and smooth the wrinkles from her short black skirt.
“Can we help you with something?” asked Azriah.
“I—well, uh, I overheard you talking back there. With Tohlog and Quibbule.”
Root shot Azriah a look.
“You’re planning something, right?” She lowered her voice. “Something against the church?”
Azriah put up a hand to wave her away. He opened his mouth.
“I won’t tell anyone,” added the girl hastily. “Really. But I want in. I know Tohlog—he’ll tell you. He made… uh, he made my ID.”
“What’s your name?”
“Penny. Penny Teap.”
“How old are you, Penny?”
“Sixteen. Or twenty-three as needed.”
“Got any skills?”
Penny’s face went through a rapid succession of expressions that Root was more familiar with when they crossed her own face: panicked eyes and a mouth ready to jump into an answer before the brain had one loaded into the queue—an unmistakable look found on the receiving end of every cold-call question aimed at an unprepared student.
“I walk my neighbor’s dog,” said Penny hurriedly—with her tongue and not her brain, if Root had to guess.
Azriah nodded. “Well, I don’t think you quite overheard us correctly. We don’t have any business with the church. As for the project we’re working on, I don’t think you’d be a good fit.”
“But keep at it with the dog thing,” said Root earnestly.
“But—”
“Sorry,” said Azriah with a tug of his lips and a wave. Already he was sidestepping in a conversation-ending direction.
“We’ll keep your resume on file for any future openings,” said Root. “Best of luck.”
Before the girl could pelt them with further questions about her application, they turned and made their way back toward the walls.
Pippa crouched on a rooftop. Her huge black eyes peered over the low wall as they zipped up and down and left and right across the huge fortress in front of her.
Front door, rear door, she thought to herself, her eyes landing on each. Upper balcony—possibly accessible.
Possibly was a stretch. The fortress—all topsy-turvy layers, greenery, and metal spikes—stood away from all others. She liked roof access—or upper windows, at least. But it was a long, long gap from this building to that one. Big jump. Big, big jump. She could do big jumps, but big, big jumps? Those were questionable. She’d need a good running start. And she’d have to be careful not to trip.
No, the front door would have to do. Lot of guards there, lot of guards. But they were all humans. Heehee! Silly humans! Humans were sooo slow—all of them, no variation, no surprises! She’d watched them run. No fun.
Front entry, then? Oh, if she had to. The boss had told her to find something more hidden if she could. It was right there in her instructions. And she wanted to do a good job. She really, really wanted to do a good job. Wanted to follow all the instructions perfectly—no tripping up.
Pippa lifted her head a little higher. She should go around to the other side, assess from another vantage point. Yes, yes.
She hoisted herself up—
—And slipped over the edge. She landed on her butt on a window ledge.
“Oof,” she muttered, rubbing her head as her vision spun. No more of that, no more! She had to do a good job.
She looked back up at the fortress—the Eternal Palace, the boss called it. What a silly name.
Time to find a better way in, and soon. She didn’t have much time left, not much at all.