Sons and Brothers #3
“Stay here,” Dawn says. He climbs the stairs and approaches the thing on the landing.
He doesn’t spray, doesn’t flinch when the agonized limbs roll toward him.
Instead, he replaces his nozzle with his bayonet, rests the tip over the hireling’s neck, and drives it downward.
The man—or the man-shaped mass of appendages—releases a kitten-like mewl, struggles briefly, then falls still.
Though his limbs stop moving, they don’t stop changing.
“I’ll go up first,” Dawn says, too calmly. “Stay behind me.”
Three nudges Guy’s back with a wooden elbow. “Check your respirator,” she says without humor.
He does, then follows Dawn up the steps to the executive suites.
A hall stretches before them, a promenade of offices and meeting rooms, bloated with toxin and weeping gold filigree.
The largest and farthest of the doors leads to the office of the Sreckt brothers.
By the names on the doorplate, there are three, but when Guy enters, he finds only two, and only one of them alive.
The first brother is flattened along the back wall, fused with a shattered mirror.
He hangs in a spiderweb of cracked glass, bare mouth open.
He clutches his respirator in one hand, or something that was once a hand, his contorted limbs amplified tenfold in their own broken reflection.
Glass grows along his corpse like frost.
The other brother sits at the desk, dressed in iron vine and wearing his golden respirator. He doesn’t stand when they enter, only rocks in his chair, gloved fist clenched on the desk.
“Eir Sreckt,” Dawn begins. “Are you all right?”
“Fuck you,” comes the reply. “Get out.”
“You called us,” Three mutters.
“Can we escort you out?” Dawn asks.
“Can you escort me out? You tell me, you shits. You did this.” He shifts his burning glare between them. “Where’s Bertram?”
“You can talk to him outside,” Dawn offers.
“Oh, sure, like I’ll be brought before him like a fucking subject—” His respirator hiccups, and Guy gets the impression he is spitting inside of it.
“If that insect has anything resembling a spine, he’ll come up himself.
” The gold trunk of his mask rotates toward the door.
“That had better be him. Better be, by God’s great broken corpse—”
“Calm down, Erik,” Bertram says, stepping into the room. “Nice to see you. I was worried when we got the call—” He stops to consider the second brother. “Shit. What happened to Hans?”
“You fucking maggot,” Sreckt replies. “You fly. You know what happened.”
“Honestly, I don’t.” Bertram examines the body, suspended in a sacrificial pose like the old statues of the Mongfestun monks. “Not even sure Reames could figure that one out.”
Sreckt lurches forward. “Wipe that smile off your face—I know you’re smiling.”
“Sorry. It’s just—” Bertram’s laugh is soft, devoid of malice. “If you hadn’t spurned me in the boardroom, you might’ve been able to take care of this yourself. God knows you’ve got the resources.”
Sreckt’s goggles fix on Bertram. “Fifty million,” he says. “Fifty million and I’ll rent you the manufactory under Eighth. One year. That’s less than half it’s worth.”
“A tempting offer, but a little late.” Bertram pulls a folded paper from an iron-vine sac. Its edges curl in the misty toxin.
“Vile,” Sreckt spits. “Utterly vile.”
“You saw what happened here, Erik. You’ve seen what’s been happening. This thing can chew through Tiliard like butter.”
“Oh, please. Some new pest crawls out of that goddamn river every year. We’d go broke if they didn’t.”
“Have you ever seen that?” Bertram nods toward Hans. “I’m only doing what I need to. Stepping in where others won’t.”
“Call the fucking Palas if you’re that worried.”
“You think they can handle this?” He drops the paper onto the desk. “This isn’t mowing down woad farmers in Ostlerfell.”
Sreckt’s respirator clicks, but he says nothing.
“This place is about to molt, Erik. And I’m giving you a choice. You get to decide if you want to be the living body or the dead shell.”
Sreckt stares at the paper. Something in his helmet whirs. “You need all of us to sign.”
“Well, seeing as Hans is indisposed, and Franz—where is he? Little Franz?”
“No idea,” Erik growls. “Coward ran the moment the alarms went off.”
“Shame,” Bertram sighs. “But one’s a start.”
The man stares at him, then retrieves his ink pad. “You’re insane,” he mutters.
“All good kings are, old boy. Remember Porrain? ‘A laurel crown can only sprout atop a head of mulch.’ Or something. Guylag probably remembers—you remember that one, Eir Moulène? From One Man’s Pest?”
Speechless, Guy can only nod.
“Of course he does. Here, Erik. Let’s get you somewhere safe. You’re going to donate your thumb to the cause, then?”
“What fucking choice to I have?”
“Same choice we all have, my dear. Same as every creature. Domestication, or extermination.”
“Is that a fucking line from something?” Erik mutters. Bertram only laughs, placing his hand on the man’s shoulder as he escorts him out.