“That’s no reason to lose your head.” Gar stared into the ghost’s empty eyes—and suddenly they disappeared, along with the rest of the head. From somewhere its mouth screeched, “What have you done? Where have you sent it?”
“If I send your body after it,” Gar asked, “will you stay gone?”
“Never, vile fellow! I’ll find it! It must be around here somewhere!” The ghost’s arms flew off, sailing all about, feeling and palping. One hand brushed Mira’s cheek; she shrieked and recoiled.
“You’ll make a fellow feel unwanted!” the ghost protested. “Any head will do, after all. I’ll try yours!”
Both hands converged on Mira. She screamed in utter panic.
“He can’t really hurt you!” Blaize cried, and pushed her aside just in time for the hands to clasp his own temples. “I feel only a chill. Can’t you find a better way to get a head in the afterworld?”
“The toe of my boot to you!” the unseen head cried, and sure enough, the toe of one of his feet shot off arrowing toward Blaize.
“Go back where you came from,” Blaize told it sternly, and the toe swung in a loop that sent it back toward its body.
“I have to hand it to you.” One of the ghost’s arms yanked the hand off the other and presented it to Blaize.
Mira shrieked and pressed against Alea.
“No, I’ll give you a leg up,” Blaize retorted. The ghost’s right leg shot toward the sky, sending him flat on his back—or it would have if it had stayed attached. It yanked itself loose instead, and came swinging toward Blaize’s face as the unseen head sang, “That’s a poor way to get your kicks!”
“You heel!” Blaize said with disgust. “How low can you sink?” Sure enough, the foot shot toward the ground—and into it. “How can a fellow make sense out of the world piecemeal?” the ghost protested.
“Oh, pull yourself together!” Alea said, exasperated, and all the parts of the specter shot back toward his torso and reattached themselves. A fuzzy ball appeared in the crook of his arm, shrinking in on itself and hardening into his head, leering out at them. “Well, I appreciate the help,” it said, “but don’t expect me to feel beholden.”
“I don’t expect you to feel anything in the state you’re in,” Alea retorted. “Just remember that we can take you apart and put you back together again.”
“I’ll remember you,” the head sang, “if you dismember me.”
“All right, if you wish.” Alea stepped forward, rolling up her sleeves.
“No, no! I believe you! just let me get my head on straight.” The ghost took its head in its hands and screwed it back onto its shoulders. “Ah! That’s better. All right, you’ve convinced me that you’ll go where you will—but where will you go?”
“Back out of this city,” Gar told him, “as soon as we’re sure our pursuers have left.”
“Pursuant to the all-clear? But till then, let me introduce you to some fascinating people! Bowles! Spenser! Solutre!”
They stepped from the shadows, lean men and women in ragged tunics and patched hose, the redhead on the left with a gloating grin and a crossbow leveled, the grizzled woman on the right giggling as she raised the nozzle of a flamethrower. In the center came a man as tall as Gar but as lean as a rail, seeming to be made of sticks and straw—his hair was even the pale, pale blond of new hay. His eyes alone seemed truly sane. Light winked on the whetted edge of the three-foot sword he carried before him.
Twenty more like them loomed out of the shadows, each with a wyvern on its shoulder. Some limped, one had a twisted foot, another a greatly enlarged shoulder, a third a harelip. Two advanced with the vacant eyes and slack smiles of the very simple, but they held their crossbows steady.
“You may have nothing to fear from ghosts,” Corbin said, “but what about our descendants, and the outcasts who have sought sanctuary among us?”
Gar surveyed the approaching mob while Alea gathered herself, hand on the knife beneath her bodice, concentrating on mayhem. Gar called out, “Were you all born here, or are there some who came fleeing a cruel lord or the disgust of your fellows?”
The mob ground to a halt, the scarecrow in front frowning. “Some of us know what it is to flee,” he said, “but don’t think you can cozen us with that! This is our city and our district of it, and any who come must bow to us!”
“Don’t you welcome fellow fugitives?” Gar asked.
“Aye, if they can pull their own weight and know their places!”
“Our place is out of here,” Alea said. “Surely you won’t insist on keeping us if you don’t want us!”
“No, but we might have fun with you first.” The grizzled woman pointed the nozzle of her flamethrower at Gar and giggled again.
“Are you a magician then, to play with fire?” Gar asked. “We don’t recognize that nonsense about magicians here,” Corbin said with a laugh. “Everyone has some talent, large or small—but the tricks that are only tools and toys, why, I’ve taught that to them all.”
“How many flamethrowers did you find?” Gar asked.
“Only a dozen.” Corbin seemed mildly impressed by the term. “But they made a dozen more from spare parts.”
“We’ve something of that knack ourselves,” Gar told him. “Mira, show them your pets.”
Mira straightened as though coming out of a daze, then smiled and raised her arms, crying out with a cawing noise. The wyverns sprang from the warriors’ shoulders and streaked toward her, one landing on her outstretched leather-clothed arm, the others perching on stone ledges as close to her as they could get, hissing and cooing. Their owners cried out in indignation.
“Give us back our wyverns!” cried a voice from the crowd, and a red-faced man stepped forward. He was dressed like the others and, like them, sprouted the sores of vitamin deficiencies, but he stretched out an arm, making a noise halfway between a coo and a caw, and two of the wyverns leaped into the air to shoot back to land on his shoulder and forearm.
“Come, the rest of you!” he said sternly.
Mira stroked the scaly head and sinuous neck of the wyvern on her arm; it dosed its eyes in pleasure. “You can trust them with me.”
“Trust you to turn them against us, aye! Give them back, or I’ll loose my human friends!”
“I’d hate to have these pretty fliers torn between the two of us,” Mira said sadly. “Can’t you believe their opinion of me?” The wyverneer glowered at her and her new pet, then reluctantly allowed, “Aye, that I can. How are you bewitching them, anyway? It’s taken me a year to learn to drive that one!”
“I don’t drive them,” Mira told him. “I flatter and befriend them. They come to me for pleasure, not out of fear.”
“Spoiling them rotten, I’ll warrant,” the wyverneer said in disgust. “Still, I’ll trust their opinion. If they say you’re good, I’ll believe them. My name’s Stukely.”
“Mine is Mira,” she said, eyes wide in surprise.
“Well, if she’s trustworthy, maybe the rest of you are,” said the tall skeletal man. “I’m Longshanks.” He transferred the sword to his left hand and held out his right.
Gar took it, though his own left hand still rested on his dagger. “I’m Gar Pike.”
“Gar, are you?” Longshanks grinned. “Seems we’re named alike.”
“I’m Solutre.” The grizzled woman reached out to Alea. “I know I’m gruff, but someone has to keep these lugs in line.”
“I know what you mean,” Alea said with a smile as she clasped the woman’s hand.
Gar looked at her askance but said nothing.
“And who have we here?” The redhead advanced on Blaize. “What can you do for your friends, fellow?” He frowned as Blaize shrank away. “What’s the matter? Think I’ve got the plague?”