The Lost Puzzler

When I looked back it was already too late. She was sliding across the table. Her knees hit me square in the chest. I flew backwards and, for the second time that night, hit my head, this time on the carpeted floor. For a moment I could only see swirling colours in front of my eyes as she pinned me down, her knees digging into my chest. I could feel a blade at my throat, pressed hard, the cold steel biting into my skin.

“Who sent you?” she hissed at me as I tried desperately to blink away tears of pain from my eyes.

“No one,” I managed to croak while trying to breathe. The back of my head was hurting from the fall, and her weight was crushing my chest. Vincha was not a dainty woman, and she was holding a very sharp blade. I could feel blood tickling down the side of my neck and fought the instinct to try and push her away, a move that would have surely been my last.

“Go rust,” she swore. She pressed a hand to my forehead, pinning my head and making it hard for me to blink. Suddenly the blade at my throat vanished but my feeling of relief was replaced with horror as I felt the cold steel again, this time just under my eyeball.

“I can cut your throat,” she said menacingly, “or I can take out an eye. Tell me who sent you and it will be easier. Is it Fuazz?”

I steeled myself and tried to remain calm. One of my arms was expertly pinned down by an outstretched leg and quickly losing sensation. Trying to move my other arm was a mistake. The blade twitched and drew blood. I yelped.

“Talk now or we’re going to start a long process,” she said. Her cold voice was as sobering as the hot trickle of blood running down my cheek.

“Don’t,” I gasped. “I mean you no harm.”

“No kidding,” she chuckled bitterly. “Now who sent you? Was it that rust bucket Fuazz?”

“No.” Though he had pointed me in the right direction.

“The Grapplers?”

“No, please—”

“Ex-guild?”

“No, it’s not really lik—”

“The Omen Society.”

I paused, surprised despite my state of mind at that moment. “Surely you didn’t manage to get on their bad side as well?” I said, and surprisingly enough it made her laugh, though she didn’t ease the pressure under my eye.

“Look,” I tried again, using what I was hoping was a calm and reasonable voice, “when I said I came with no intention to harm you, I meant it. I’m not carrying any weapons.”

Walking into the Den unarmed and staying alive long enough to boast about it was something even Vincha had to check. She began a thorough search, shifting positions expertly, changing her blade-holding hand several times without easing the pressure, leaving me vulnerable and exposed throughout the entire procedure. Under different circumstances it would have been almost enjoyable.

Finally she said, “Your eyes.”

“What of it?” I kept my voice as light as possible. “I can see in the dark, cheat at cards, sometimes see through people or even thin walls, but what’s the worst I could do, squint at you to death?”

She nodded more to herself than for my benefit and the blade eased up a bit.

“Talk,” she commanded.

“I work for a small society of men and women,” I blurted quickly. “We are the Guild of Historians. We explore our past in order to know the present and prepare for the future.” It came out like the superficial mantra it was. The Guild of Historians was as much about selling artifacts for hard coin as it was about helping humanity or finding out about the Catastrophe, but I didn’t care—at least I was talking and Vincha was listening and no part of me was being prodded or cut. “I want to interview you, about what happened when you went into the ruins, with the boy …”

She looked down at me in disbelief. “You tracked me down to the Den for this?”

“Yes.”

“Go rust in a corner.”

“It’s important to us. We need to know what happened.”

“I don’t remember. It’s been a long time,” she said, still hovering above me.

“We have ways to make you remember,” I said, and added hurriedly when I saw her expression harden, “Just mind techniques, nothing intrusive.”

She shook her head. “What’s past is past.” She got up, still holding her blade at the ready. “Don’t make any sudden moves,” she warned. “Now tell me how you know my real name and how you found me.”

“I’ve been trying to track you down for almost two years now,” I said, rubbing my dead arm back to life.

“I’m surprised you found me.”

“There are some things I’m better at than cards,” I said, managing a lighter tone of voice, and sat up as an involuntary groan escaped my lips. “You never stay more than a month in one place, you never go back to the same workplace when you come back to the same town, you never work the same line on a map for more than three spots, and you prefer to work and stay in older establishments, especially ex-Salvationist businesses. You’re good, but there’s a pattern to your movements. Once I figured it out, it was only a matter of trying the odds.”

“And all this for a rusting interview?” she said, perching herself carefully on the side of the playing table, out of arm’s reach but close enough for a kick or a stab.

“Yes. We just want to hear your version of what happened.”

“Well tough luck, Twinkle Eyes. I ain’t talking to you or to your weird rusting guild.”

I got up on my feet, nice and slow, and picked up the overturned chair. “We’re willing to pay,” I said, then added when I saw her expression, “and pay well.”

“I earn nicely, thank you. Now get out.”

This was the moment. There wouldn’t be another one. After tonight she would disappear, because if I could find her, so could others, and there were plenty of nasty individuals who were looking for her. I had to make her talk, I simply had to, so I said the next sentence despite knowing it would probably get me killed.

“I know why you travel in such a pattern.”

I saw her freeze.

“I know why you travel the way you do. I know why you’re still in debt and where the coin you earn goes. I know about your daughter.”

Her expression went blank, which meant she was about to kill me.

“This is not a shakedown,” I said hastily, throwing my hands in the air. “I don’t care about your business, but I’m ready to make life easier for you and for your family. I will pay a lot for your story.”

She paused, the blade dancing in her hand. I held my breath, thinking I might as well hold on to it as long as I still had a choice. I tried to avert my eyes from the dancing blade.

“How much?” she asked

“Enough to clear your debt and make your family easier to conceal.”

“I paid my debts,” she said. “It took me a long time but I paid them.”

That was surprising, and probably untrue. “That’s not what I heard,” I said in a neutral tone, not sure if this turning point in the conversation could be used to my advantage.

“I paid my debt to the last metal coin,” she insisted, as if she thought I cared, “but the bloodsuckers piled up the interest, you can never get away from them, and they just wanted more, kept coming for it, so I stopped paying.”

I nodded. “Still, coin is coin. I’m offering you hard metal for no risk and no sex. How you use it is your business.”

“How much?” she asked again.

I thought of a sum, divided it in my mind, divided it again, and then said it.

“You’re kidding, right? For that sum I wouldn’t even show you my birthmark.”

I smiled. We were negotiating, and that was something I was very good at. I opened my mouth for a clever response, but there was a sudden commotion behind the door. Without realising how it was done, I was on my feet, facing the door, with Vincha’s blade once again pressing against my throat.

There was a loud bang and then the door burst open. The guard who moved the tapestry came sailing through the air and now lay sprawled at our feet. He did not get up. Galinak, covered in perspiration and stained with blood, walked slowly but purposely through the open door. He was smiling peacefully, as if he’d just gone on a leisurely stroll.

He stopped when he saw me. “Well,” he said, “what have we got here?”

“Galinak, you piece of rusting metal,” said Vincha calmly, her face close to my neck. “I thought you’d been banned from here.”

“It’s nice to see you too, Vincha.” Galinak tilted his head. “May I say that you sound better than when you were on Skint, but what the hell happened to your wirings?”

“Been clean and vegan for more than three years now,” said Vincha, “but my reflexes are still good, better than those cat innards you have for wirings.”

“You should release my guy,” mused Galinak, “unless you wish to test those reflexes. And let me warn you, I am not the gentle soul I used to be.”

“Perhaps we could negotiate? I could give him back to you one piece at a time,” Vincha pressed the blade just to make a point. There was something really wrong about this encounter.

“Sooo,” I intoned, trying to sound carefree, “you know each other, what a coincidence, and a pleasant surprise, saves me the introductions, now where were we? I believe we were negotiating.”

Vincha paused, then said a price, which was exactly eight times what I offered her.

“Bukra’s balls! What are you trying to buy, her soul?” asked Galinak. The guard groaned and moved and Galinak kicked him several times until he stopped.

“That’s a lot of hard metal,” I said. We could all hear the commotion coming closer. “It would be bad judgement for me to accept such an offer.”

“You showed plenty lack of judgement in employing an old burned-out Troll like Galinak.” I didn’t see Vincha’s face, but I could feel her smiling, “That’s my offer, take it or go rust in Tarakan Valley.”

“I’ll do whatever she does for half the coin,” suggested Galinak, “and I assume you’re not asking for sex, unless you have a really weird sense of—”

“Vincha,” I intervened, “it’s against my principles to pay that much for anything, even for your story, but I’ll accept it. Now put the damn blade away and let’s go.”

She obliged, releasing the blade from my throat but keeping it in her hand. Both warriors stared each other down, but Galinak was quick to smile and spread his arms wide.

“What? No hug?”

Vincha snorted a laugh, sheathed the blade, and busied herself gathering my lost coins from the table.

“You’re stealing from the Den,” remarked Galinak with the careful tone of voice one keeps for the suicidal.

“Never coming back here again, anyway,” she answered curtly, pocketing my hard-lost fortune.

“How is it going up there?” I asked Galinak.

“Hmmm, let’s see.” Galinak scratched his head with a bloodied hand. “Someone smuggled in a shock grenade and threw it, and when they raided the bar, the guards stationed above started sniping—and let me tell you, these guys never even heard of the stun button, so … it’s pretty bad, but I’ve seen worse.”

Walking through a bar fight involving four hundred participants was not a pleasant notion. “Is there another way out of here?” I asked Vincha.

“Sure, there’s a secret door leading to a safe house just around the corner. We can avoid all the fighting and mayhem,” she said drily, pocketing the last coin.

We looked silently at each other for a few heartbeats. “Are you serious?” I asked hesitantly.

“Of course I ain’t serious,” she shook her head at my gullibility. “One way into the Den and one way out. We’ll have to fight our way through.”

Galinak puffed a theatrical sigh of relief. “I thought for a moment you were serious about the secret door,” he admitted, and then we ran for it.

The gambling hall was now empty of patrons, but halfway across it we encountered a group of men disposing of the last standing guard. They homed in on us with greed and a lust for violence plain on their faces. Without saying a word, Galinak advanced casually to my left as Vincha took my right and the fight errupted. I paced cautiously between them, completely untouched, as if walking inside the eye of a storm, occasionally side stepping or ducking as people were flung, flailing and screaming, from one side of the room to the other. I couldn’t help but notice the different fighting styles of the two veterans. For Vincha fighting was purely business; short, economical gestures, arms close to the body, hitting vulnerable points for maximum damage. She cut through them like a hot blade through butter, breaking, twisting, gouging, and kicking without hesitation. Galinak, on the other hand, fought like it was an art form. He danced around, making broad gestures and finishing moves that occasionally used the Den’s few intact pieces of furniture and architecture as props. Very soon there was no one left standing but us. I suppressed the urge to clap my hands in appreciation as the pair brushed off dust and wiped off other people’s blood. Galinak was grinning broadly again.

We climbed the stairs and entered the main hall, which was now completely wrecked and with far fewer people in it. I could see at least three places, including the central bar and the wooden cage of the arena, where fire had broken out, probably ignited by a missed sniper shot. A few enthusiastic patrons managed to climb up to the elevated guard posts and were now engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the snipers. On ground level the guards were earning their pay, taking control of the area bit by bit, pounding every standing person they saw into a state of bloody unconsciousness. We avoided them by staying low and moving in the shadows as we headed for the door, thankfully without incident.

Outside the Den things were not much better. Many of the guards were lying among the wounded and dead.

The goggled Troll was standing alone, looking around nervously. For all his enhanced vision, he didn’t notice Galinak until he was tapped from behind on the shoulder, which caused him to spin around in fright, brandishing a blaster.

“I’ll have my weapons now,” said Galinak, surprisingly polite and calm.

“You can’t,” spluttered the Troll, “there’s a clampdown until the fight is done. You’ll get them back when it’s over.”

“I need them now,” insisted Galinak.

The Troll eyed Galinak with a sneer of contempt and steadied his blaster, pointing it at Galinak’s chest. “Rough rust, old snot. You’ll just have to cross your wires and wait.”

It was probably the wrong thing to say.

8

Sunlight rarely touches the Pit, so I lost track of time and it seemed like it took forever to get from the Den to Vincha’s home. We had to climb several ladders and cross a rope bridge to reach her wooden shack. It was indistinguishable from the hundreds of such structures, a neighbourhood built up against the base of the Tarakan towers in rows that rose above the lower market halfway to the Central Plateau and was adequately called Shackville. The word shack was perhaps an overstatement. It was a small, windowless hut made of rotten wood. Between the gaps in the warped floorboards, you could see the drop below. Even with the protection from the elements that the City of Towers provided them with, shacks would occasionally collapse, and the Pit’s residents would jump to help casualties—relieving them of the burden of their belongings at the same time, then using the leftover debris to build more shacks.

I sat down heavily on one of the only two stools available and massaged my temples. The air was hot, and there was a constant humming noise. Galinak wasted no time. He sat on the floor and began to dress a blaster burn with salve he bought from a Mender’s stall at the market, while Vincha poured us a drink from a flask she fished out from under her makeshift bed. To be precise, she poured two drinks, one for herself and one for Galinak, but did not offer me any, which, oddly, made me feel a little hurt. She downed the drink and busied herself chopping the eel we also bought on our way back. If the butcher in the ever-open food market thought there was anything odd about bloodied and bruised customers, she was wise enough not to show it.

There wasn’t much to look at, so I end up eyeing Vincha’s travelling bag while considering our current position. Vincha travelled light; her bag confirmed this. My guess was she planned to split town, but first she wanted to eat, gather her strength, and figure out the best way to hustle more coin out of me.

The cooker was powered by a cable she’d clearly attached without permission to a local power generator. Still, it was a blessing. Many residents of Shackville had no choice but to cook over open fires. Vincha brought two cracked ceramic plates to the small table. There were no forks or other forms of cutlery, only Vincha’s blade, which carved the cooked eel with alarming ease. She served herself a hefty portion, then sat down in front of me and folded her arms across her chest.

“No instruments” was the first thing she said.

I nodded my compliance.

“No prodding of any kind, and if I see your eyes glow, or if they even so much as look funny, I’ll carve them out.” She made a show of looking meaningfully at her knife before carving a piece of eel for herself.

“Done.” I tried not to stare at the blade as she cut through steaming flesh or dwell on how it had felt pressed up against my skin back in the Den.

“So where’s my payment?” Vincha shoved the piece of eel into her mouth.

“First I need to know you were in the Valley when it all happened.”

She snorted, swallowing. “Rust, yeah, I was there. Not many of us came out alive on that day, but I made it.”

“And you remember what happened?”

“I remember.” Her voice got uncharacteristically quiet. “I’ve been trying to forget ever since.”

“You were close to him.” It wasn’t a question. I’d spoken to dozens of ex-Salvationists about that period. Actually, I’d coerced, drilled, begged, seduced, bribed, threatened, and occasionally beaten the stories out of them. They had all talked, eventually. Each had a personalized version of the same story, placing themselves at its epicentre, yet they all had one thing in common: Vincha, and how close she was to the boy.

“Yes, we were close,” she admitted. “He was just a kid, small and skinny, frightened, surrounded by the worst Salvationist scumbags, a broken soul, like the rest of us. Somehow, we connected. I don’t know why. We just did.”

Galinak chuckled and said, “Woman’s intuit—” then ducked the knife that flew past my face and embedded itself in the rotted wall behind him.

“Go rust, cheap wires,” she spat at him, but without much zeal in her voice. Even the throw was halfhearted, although I was just guessing that, really.

Galinak and Vincha traded colourful insults for a while, but I didn’t pay much attention to the poetry. I was too excited. My long search was over and the key to solving the mystery was sitting in front of me. This woman knew what had happened, she knew, and for all her bravado and greed, I sensed that like the rest of them, she wanted to tell me her version of the story; all I needed to do was ask the right questions.

I knew what I was going to ask first, but I just had to wait until Galinak fell silent.

“What was his name?” I asked.

Vincha smiled coyly. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

I already knew, but that wasn’t the point. “I’ve heard many names.”

“Yes, they called him the Kid, or the Key, but mostly just the Puzzler. They never called him by his name, maybe because it would have reminded them that he was human. But I knew his name, he told me …”

“What was it?”

She knew …

“Where’s my coin?”

I took out two diamonds from my pocket and put them on the table.

She looked at them, then at me. “What are those?” she demanded.

“These will fetch you a quarter of what you asked for.”

She looked back at the diamonds with open suspicion on her face “Where?”

“Upper Towers will give you a fair price, or the East Coast traders if you want to make the trip. Most craftsmen would buy them as well, but for a reduced price.”

Anticipating her protest, I added, “No one could carry that much coin around. The diamonds are sound, and worth a quarter of what we agreed upon.”

She scooped up the diamonds into her hand in a fluid motion and inspected them before saying, “I’ll tell you a quarter of the story, then.”

“It’s a start,” I said, my heart pounding.

“His name was Rafik, but his friends called him Raff, a boy from one of the Wildener villages, you know, those who followed that weird Prophet who rejected technology. Of all the places he could have been born, fate chose for him the worst rusting place.”

9

Rafik lay on the ground, trying to stay still and control his breathing. If his pursuers would hear him it would be his end. He heard shouts and the thumping of feet hitting the ground a few yards to his left, and he fought the urge to bolt. There were two of them. A third one moved farther away, searching, but Rafik guessed he was still within earshot.

“Did you see him? Are you sure?” It was one of the infidels.

“Yes, I’m sure,” came the answer from such a close distance it made Rafik’s heart jerk with fear. “We take him out and we’ll have them all.”

Rafik closed his eyes and dug his chin down in the dirt, willing himself to be grass, praying to the Prophet Reborn for help, berating himself for any blasphemous thoughts or deeds in his past, for surely his sinful ways had brought him to this predicament. If what the infidel said was true, all his friends were either captured or taken out. He could not make up his mind which fate was better; the infidels had their nasty ways with captives, and he knew that for a fact. Poor Eithan—Rafik had made efforts to protect his friend, but they’d split up in the woods and Eithan was among the first to fall.

One of the infidels took another step towards the shallow ditch, and Rafik shivered involuntarily as he heard the enemy’s feet crushing the grass.

They were almost above him, standing on top of the mound. It was a sheer miracle neither of them looked down and spotted him practically lying under their feet.

After an eternity, he heard one of them say “Let’s go. He probably kept running east. We’ll find him soon enough—he can’t be too far away.”

The other infidel mumbled a defeated reply, and they began to move away. He was saved; thank the God and the Prophet Reborn. Rafik’s body, suddenly realising he’d been holding his breath for far too long, exhaled quickly. The gesture was followed, naturally, by a large intake of breath, which carried dust from the plants or the earth. Before Rafik could control himself, he sneezed loudly.

The rest happened in kind of a blur. He heard shouts of discovery and running steps getting closer. Rafik’s fist clenched over dirt and dead leaves as he uttered one last prayer to the Prophet Reborn. When they were on top of him, he jumped up and flung the handful of dirt into the face of the incoming infidel—who, bless the Prophet Reborn, was just opening his mouth in a shout of triumph. The result was pretty spectacular, but Rafik did not linger to watch. He was running again, this time faster than ever before, faster than he’d ever run in his life. He heard his pursuers behind him and bolted through the undergrowth, trying to lose them. There was no point in turning and fighting; he would be overwhelmed for sure. There was only one thing to do now: complete his mission or die trying.

Rafik altered his course midstride and burst through the undergrowth again. As luck would have it, he actually ran right between two surprised infidel guards, and before they managed to react he was already back in the foliage. Now there were four of them running after him. Four, two, it doesn’t matter, the exhilarating thought flashed in his mind, as long as they cannot catch me.

The infidels probably realised what he was trying to do, as several cries rose from the areas he passed, and they began converging on him from all directions. In his peripheral vision, Rafik saw dark silhouettes rushing almost alongside him. Soon they would pounce. Instinctively, he abruptly altered his course again, which took him in a direction away from his goal but also traced an arc that would confuse his pursuers just a little while longer—at least that was what he hoped to accomplish.