IGMS Issue 16 Read online

  "Alkahest," he said. He was silent for several breaths and Jennet prayed he was seriously considering her offer. Outside she could hear the bells begin to toll eight of the clock. He turned towards Bess, "Come here, girl."

  Bess came without hesitation. In one swift motion, the apothecary rose to his feet, grabbed her, and put his knife to her throat.

  Jennet bit back a scream. That was not what she had intended! If Bess had struggled, or acted frightened, Jennet wasn't sure what she would have done. But Bess looked more defiant than anything else, despite the tears streaking her face; she'd clearly known exactly what she was doing when she obeyed the apothecary's command.

  If they survived this, Jennet was going to tan her hide.

  After a moment, Jennet slowly sat up, afraid of startling him if she moved any faster. Blood trickled down her neck and she wiped at it with the back of her hand. That wasn't enough to stop the bleeding, so she spat on her palm and rubbed it over the scratch. Better. "Is there anything more you can tell me about this --" She still couldn't remember the name. "This thing you're looking for? Sir?"

  "Alkahest," he repeated. "It is a reddish stone. The piece you brought Rawlins was about the size of my palm."

  "I remember it now, sir - it was further out into the Thames than most of what I bring up." Jennet hesitated, trying to gauge his response, but he didn't seem suspicious of her lies so she added, "We might need a boat to get there, even at low tide."

  "I can get a boat," he said.

  Jennet thought he must be growing excited; his knife had slipped down to rest more against Bess's collarbone than her throat. If he got careless - if he let go entirely - Jennet promised herself she would grab Bess and run. Revenge could wait. At least until she got Bess somewhere safe . . .

  The apothecary lifted the knife up higher again, pressing it into Bess's skin. Jennet's heart sank as he glared at her - her face must have betrayed her thoughts again. "Try to run and I'll raise the hue and cry," he warned her.

  Jennet shivered and hugged her knees to her chest, all thoughts of running forgotten. If he raised the hue and cry, everyone within earshot would come to his call to bear witness and help catch them. Their word was worthless compared to his; he could easily convince the watch that she and Bess had tried to rob him - why else would they be out after curfew? If they were lucky, they'd each lose a hand. More likely, they would both hang - the herbs and books in the apothecary's shop had to be worth far more than a sixpence.

  He stared at her for a long moment, then nodded to himself. "Don't move," he ordered. Then he dragged Bess into his back room.

  Jennet nearly panicked - what was he doing to Bess? - but he wasn't gone for long; he returned just as the bells rang quarter past. He still held the knife to Bess's throat, but Bess now had a lit lantern in one hand and an empty sack in the other.

  "We're going now?" Jennet asked, scrambling to her feet. "But . . ." The apothecary pulled the lantern out of Bess's hand and held it out towards Jennet. She took it, uncertainly.

  He dragged Bess out into the night. Jennet didn't have any real choice but to follow.

  Jennet couldn't remember ever being out this long after curfew. There were a surprising number of people in the streets, all bearing lanterns to let the watch know they were of good repute and on legitimate errands. Her ragged clothing made her stand out from the others and several of the watchmen started towards her before they realized she was with the apothecary. He was her safe-conduct - a respectable tradesman and Guild member.

  She wondered if any of them realized he had a knife, half-hidden by his body, pressed up against Bess's back.

  When they reached the riverside, the apothecary pounded on the door of a run-down tenement. A young waterman - Jennet vaguely recognized him, but didn't know his name - answered the door. For a moment Jennet hoped he would refuse them; there was a shilling fine for ferrying customers after curfew. Then the apothecary pressed five gold angels into his hand. Jennet had never seen that much money before in her life. Neither had the waterman - he readily agreed that the apothecary could take his boat, no questions asked, and that he had never seen anything.

  The tide had turned again and the Thames stood just past its high water mark when they reached the waterman's boat. Under any other circumstances Jennet would have just stood at the river wall and stared into its inky-black depths; the Thames was beautiful at night. But now she hurried down the Savoy Stairs after Bess and the apothecary and climbed into the boat with them.

  He made her row, so he could hold the knife to Bess's throat again. Even though the oars were short, Jennet had a hard time managing the boat - she kept getting caught up by unexpected sandbars and snags. Her arms and shoulders began to ache before they were even halfway to the stretch of the river which ran past Temple Stairs. But she kept pulling at the oars until she was sure they were well away from the shore. Then she laid down the oars.

  "We're here?" The apothecary asked, eagerly.

  "What's so special about a river rock, anyway?" Jennet stalled, as she leaned over the edge of the boat and trailed her hand in the water. After a few moments, the Thames spoke to her. The river was a good three stories deep here; its current was running fast and strong, straight out to sea. Anyone who fell into the river here would drown for sure. Her heart began to race faster, as if it would become one with the current.

  "I told you before - it purifies base metals." When she stared at him blankly, he added, "Turns them into gold. And according to legend, enough of it will make a man immortal."

  "Oh." How terrible was it to be afraid of death? Especially when not even the priests could agree on what would take a man to heaven and what would send him straight to hell? A man, or a little girl, she reminded herself, focusing on the knife at Bess's throat. "Why did you throw Kensal into the river?"

  "The Lord's will be done," he said. "I am no murderer."

  "But you stabbed her first!"

  He didn't answer.

  "You could have just asked us, just paid us to find it for you! Why take her in the first place?"

  The apothecary pinned her in place with a gaze that was suddenly as cold as the water beneath their boat. "Exodus 22:18. You shall not suffer a witch to live."

  He was going to kill them. Even if she helped him. Jennet couldn't quite wrap her mind around it. He had tracked them down because he needed exactly what they could do, and afterwards he was going to quote the Bible while he murdered her and Bess? He'd probably find Kensal again and finish what he had started. And Reade? The twins? The rest of her crew?

  She couldn't let him do that. She had to stop him. By whatever means necessary.

  Jennet met Bess's eyes, praying that the younger girl would understand.

  Bess nodded, just a little.

  Jennet drew in a deep breath then flung herself against the side of the boat.

  The boat rocked and the apothecary fell over sideways, catching himself instinctively with both hands. Bess ducked away from him as the boat tipped back the other direction. Jennet tumbled across to the low side of the boat and Bess joined her, adding her own slight weight to Jennet's own.

  For a moment, Jennet was terrified that it wasn't going to be enough, but then the boat tipped over sideways, spilling its passengers into the river.

  The current snatched them.

  Even though Jennet had planned this, she still panicked when she realized she didn't know up from down anymore. She began flailing her arms and legs about, not sure which way she was trying to go, only certain that she had to go somewhere. Her chest began to hurt, her lungs crying out for air, which only made her thrash about more wildly.

  Then her head broke through the surface of the river. Jennet gasped and blinked her eyes, trying to clear them. "Bess!" She slipped under again, but this time she knew which way was up. Kicking as hard as she could, she managed to fight her way back to the surface. "Bess!"

  Hands caught hold of her leg and Jennet only had time enough to realize it was
the apothecary before they both sank. She pried at his hands and he let go so he could grab her around the waist. He seemed more intent on dragging himself upward than on pulling her down, but either way he was going to kill her. Jennet squirmed around within his grip and managed to get a leg between her body and his. She planted her foot on his stomach and kicked with all her might.

  He gasped out a stream of air bubbles and loosened his hold just enough for her to tear herself free. Then he went very still and began sinking even deeper into the current. Dying. Dead.

  As Jennet stared at the apothecary, shocked, she finally realized that the river was speaking to her - it must had been trying to get her to listen ever since the moment she fell in - warning her that the current had dragged her down too far. She was already halfway to the riverbed and still firmly caught in its grip. There was no hope of fighting her way back to the surface; she was going to die just like the apothecary.

  What about Bess? Jennet begged the river. She wasn't sure if she minded dying or not, but Bess was another matter entirely. Please, not Bess. Save Bess!

  Nothing. This was far worse than when the river had refused to speak to her about Kensal. Now the Thames didn't even respond - not a yes, or a no, just a long, drawn out silence that told her absolutely nothing. It was as if she were completely alone, even though she was surrounded by its cold, dark waters.

  Jennet didn't understand what she'd done wrong and she couldn't concentrate enough to figure it out. Her lungs burned and she could feel herself swallowing again and again, instinctively trying to gulp down air, though she managed to keep her mouth shut. Her limbs refused to cooperate, to move at all, and the current kept dragging her deeper and deeper. She was dead, her body just didn't know it yet.

  So she did the only thing left to her - she opened herself up to the river, with no reservations, surrendering completely.

  Your will be done. Take me - I am yours.

  Drowning really hurt.

  Jennet clung to that truth because it was the only thing that made sense in the madness that followed.

  The current around her went completely still. If Jennet had possessed the strength to move, she might have been able to fight her way back to the surface, but it was far too late for that.

  A wall of water crashed into her, as hard as any wall of stone. Jennet gasped, swallowed water, and choked.

  Then she was flying - or maybe falling, because water seemed to be raining down all around her. Jennet hit mud, face-first, but had no time to wonder about it. She was too busy throwing up what felt like half of the Thames to wonder about much of anything.

  Eventually she began to notice other things, besides the pain. Water lapped up around her legs. The mud beneath her was cold and she had started shivering. Then Jennet heard bare feet slapping against stone. Someone was weeping. Warm hands grabbed hold of her arm, tugging at her, dragging her away from the river that had nearly killed her and then saved her instead.

  Jennet opened her eyes and saw Bess. Her body was clumsy and uncooperative, but she still managed to throw her arms around the younger girl and hugged her as tightly as she could. "You're alive!"

  "Of course I'm alive," Bess said. "I held on to the boat!"

  Jennet couldn't help laughing, which set off another round of spewing up river water. Bess held her and rubbed her back until she was finished.

  Then Jennet tried to get to her feet and nearly fell over before Bess could catch her. "Thank you."

  Bess slung her arm around Jennet's waist, propping her upright. "You take care of us, we take care of you. That's how a crew works."

  Kensal! "The medicine --"

  "We can go back to the shop," Bess said. "I figured it out - the watch doesn't pay any attention to what goes on away from the main streets, not unless someone makes a fuss."

  Something in Jennet relaxed then, as she realized the danger was finally over. Well and truly over. Deep down inside, she knew that even Kensal would be all right. Because not even a sparrow fell without the Lord willing it to be so, much less a mudlark.

  And besides that, she saw absolutely nothing wrong with looting the shop of a man who'd nearly killed her. She'd have no trouble paying off her debt to the barber-surgeon, and there would be enough left over for her entire crew to feast like kings.

  Mean-Spirited

  by Edmund R. Schubert

  Artwork by Nick Greenwood

  * * *

  As I picked up my pistol one last time, I found my attention wandering away from the weapon itself and to the withered hand that held it. It looked like a mummy's hand, collapsing from the inside after too many millennia of desiccation. What a grotesque hand. My entire body was so close to death, why not finish the job?

  Yes, at seventy-eight years old, I could easily come up with plenty of reasons to kill myself, some of them even logical, valid reasons. Blowing my brains all over Trish's favorite Monet for pure spite probably wasn't one of the better ones, but it was good enough.

  I had considered blowing my brains out on the Jackson Pollock in the main hall, but given the nature of Pollock's work, I wasn't sure Trish would even notice. She neither knew nor cared anything about art; she collected it simply because that's what obscenely rich people do. However, a spray of blood-red blood over the renowned Frenchman's white water lilies -- that would not only get her attention, it would really piss her off. Oh, how it would piss her off.

  Dear God, how that made me smile . . .

  And it wasn't the loss of the money that would make Trish mad. Even if the painting hadn't been insured, the ancient hag had enough cash to buy fifty more. She'd probably let some museum clean the painting, then donate it to them and use the insurance money to spend a month sunbathing, topless, on the French Riviera. The wrinkled, sagging, melanoma-ridden bitch.

  No, what would piss her off to no end was the knowledge that I had ruined a century-old masterpiece just to piss her off. Trish and I had raised the art of spite and malice to that high a level. We were grand masters; we had been at each other's throats for thirty-seven years now.

  Turning my attention back at the black-barreled .45 caliber pistol in my hand, I imagined Trisha coming into the library. Her hazel eyes would go wide as she beheld the horror of the scene. I prayed that the power of the moment, the memory of it, would haunt her for years. Hell, for all eternity.

  I could envision the scene with transcendent clarity. Standing in the doorway, one of her hands would unconsciously drift to her open mouth, the tip of her forefinger coming to rest on the tip of her nose. Her hand would then drift slowly away from her face as her dumb-struck expression transformed into one of unexpurgated rage. She'd rush forward, hurdling my still-bleeding corpse in her haste to get to the painting. "Nooooo!!" she'd howl as her fingers hovered inches away from Monet's bloodstained masterpiece, afraid to touch it for fear the blood might still be damp, that it would smudge the delicate petals of the water lilies beneath.

  Then she'd turn back to my body, looming over me like I was an old dog who had just relieved himself on the carpet for the thousandth time.

  "You . . ." She'd kick me in the head. "Arrogant . . ." She'd kick me again, even harder. "Pompous . . ." Another kick. "Prick . . ." Kick.

  Her tempo would increase, and she'd punctuate each word with a blow, as if her legs were gigantic, living exclamation points. "You think you've won, don't you," she'd rant, legs pistoning merrily into my corpse. "You think you've stuck the last needle under my fingernails and gotten away with it, don't you? Well you haven't. This isn't over; do you hear me?" Aiming a final kick at my ass, her rage would crescendo. She'd be shouting at the top of her lungs, her eyes bulging, her hair disheveled from the fury of her efforts. "This isn't over until I say it's over!!!"

  Of course, she'd be wrong.

  That was the beauty of it; it would be over. And I would have won. After nearly four decades of tormenting each other, I would have finally, ultimately, unequivocally won. There was no way for her to retaliate beca
use I'd be gone, gone, gone, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  I felt like doing a little song and dance.

  Nothing you can do about it; nothing you can do about it; nothing you can . . .

  Not a good reason to kill myself? I was giddy with excitement. I couldn't imagine a better reason.

  I brought my .45 to my head, made sure I was properly aligned with the Monet so I would splatter it without putting a bullet through it, and stuck the bitter tasting barrel into my mouth. I embraced the trigger.

  I had expected a loud noise when the gun went off, followed by nothing. Darkness. Sweet oblivion.

  What I got was pain.

  Dear God, what pain. Agonizing, excruciating, unimaginable pain. Vicious, angry icicles of pain clawing their way out from the center of my brain, tearing through flesh and bone in an effort to be free. But every time they broke through to the surface, they'd vanish -- poof, just like that -- only to start over again from the center, digging and clawing their way through my brain over and over, again and again.

  Had I screwed up? Had I managed to put a pistol in my mouth, pull the trigger, and not kill myself?

  I dearly hoped not. That would give Trisha too much satisfaction.

  But those cruel icicle claws wouldn't stop. They went on and on and on, ripping and tearing, and all I could do was clench my eyes and endure the unendurable. I heard nothing; saw nothing; and felt nothing. Nothing but pain.

  I was pain.

  Finally, after what seemed like days, I managed to open one eye. It wasn't that the pain had lessened. It had not. I'd simply become more accustomed to its presence. Not much; just enough that I could tolerate the movement of one eyelid by about half an inch.

  What I saw jolted both of my eyes open.